Caught up on the new HBO film Bright Lights which is a pre-death documentary about the close relationship between Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. It was finished last year and includes a lot of interviews and footage of the two ladies – mother and daughter – who lived literally right next to each other. This is a good but kind of depressing documentary – not because they are both dead now but because they – especially Debbie Reynolds – were just hanging onto fleeting stardom while themselves being kind of shambling wrecks of humanity.
Not altogether fair since Reynolds was old… but they had her on stage in Vegas playing to a room of very old fans. That said, there’s a lot of interesting old footage of both Fisher and Reynolds from earlier movies, home video, etc. Plus a really depressing scene with Eddie Fisher a few months before he died where he was bed-ridden and barely legible.
I’d like to say the death of nearly everyone in the film lent a poignancy to the movie but really the fact everyone seemed unhealthy and barely able to function was bad enough. Still, some interesting history and behind-the-scenes of old Hollywood and a few classic Carrie Fisher interviews and scenes (hey – her first roll was opposite Warren Beatty in American Gigolo) kind of make it a watch if you like that sort of thing.
Score: 78