And in this film Streep does Joan Crawford. Well, she's done everyone else and a Crawford impersonation was probably what caps a distinguished career.
She does it well, as do the entire female cast who show their skills with a fulsome and at times tough script that allows them to unleash. Julia Roberts is quite stark and forbidding; she also has some of the best and most bruising lines.
The background is families and all their secrets. It draws on O'Neill's great play, 'Long Day's Journey into Night'. Addiction, disappointment, and even the greatest of all transgressions, which is the most destructive, coil around the family.
The male characters are less well defined; more supportive and mostly weak with glum faces and an odd rebuke. The whole work might have a better balance if this aspect had been revised slightly, and there is scope in it to do so.
Ultimately though, the movie belongs to Streep doing a King Lear as Joan Crawford with her three daughters, although they are not Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.
She does it well, as do the entire female cast who show their skills with a fulsome and at times tough script that allows them to unleash. Julia Roberts is quite stark and forbidding; she also has some of the best and most bruising lines.
The background is families and all their secrets. It draws on O'Neill's great play, 'Long Day's Journey into Night'. Addiction, disappointment, and even the greatest of all transgressions, which is the most destructive, coil around the family.
The male characters are less well defined; more supportive and mostly weak with glum faces and an odd rebuke. The whole work might have a better balance if this aspect had been revised slightly, and there is scope in it to do so.
Ultimately though, the movie belongs to Streep doing a King Lear as Joan Crawford with her three daughters, although they are not Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.