From the moment it was announced that Lindsay Lohan would be starring in a Lifetime movie about Elizabeth Taylor’s tumultuous relationship with Richard Burton, we knew that Liz & Dick was going to be bad. What remained to be seen was what kind of bad it would be: a delightful train wreck that begged for repeat viewings or just plain unwatchable. With the made-for-TV movie debuting on Sunday night at 9pm, most of the reviews are finally in (as well as a post on BuzzFeed entitled “The 32 Times I Laughed During ‘Liz & Dick'”), but we’re still not entirely sure what we’re dealing with here. What we do know is that even after reading these awful notices, we’re going to find it impossible to resist tuning in ourselves, drink in hand. Click through for some of the funniest zingers from TV critics, and let us know if you’ll be watching too.
“Elizabeth Taylor loved diamonds. This new movie about her life feels more like rhinestones.” — David Hinckley, New York Daily News
“For those who simply must watch this film, the high point is scenes re-created from the 1966 Taylor-and-Burton drama, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? They attempt to pull off a credible rendition of this classic film. Instead, Lohan and Bowler seem to be spoofing it on Saturday Night Live.” — Frazier Moore, The Associated Press
“When she opens her mouth, Lohan doesn’t speak in the high-register, girlish, faintly British-inflected voice that Taylor was using well into her 20s. Instead, we hear the raspy rattle familiar to anyone who’s seen Lohan on TMZ or in the 2009 theatrical-turned-ABC Family movie Labor Pains. No effort seems to have gone into Lohan’s preparation other than tinting her eyes Liz-violet.” Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
“As seen here, [Lohan’s] skills are rudimentary — made rustier by a long absence and a lot of other extracurricular activities. She delivers lines dutifully, competently, and at times woodenly, but she also looks like someone who has to think about what she has to say before she says it.” — Verne Gay, Newsday
“It could have been terrible in a fun way, but is, alas, terrible in the other way: It’s so terrible, you’ll need to ice your face when it’s over to ease the pain of wincing for two hours. ” — David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle
“Drinking games were made for movies like this. And the best part is that it gets worse as it goes on, so in the right company with the right beverages, Liz & Dick could be unbearably hilarious toward the tail end of the 90-minute running time. By the time Lohan is playing mid-’80s Taylor and it looks like a lost Saturday Night Live skit, your body may be cramped by convulsions.” — Tim Goodman, The Hollywood Reporter
“Exploitation really is the name of the game here; the whole point of casting Lohan was to draft off her status as a formerly promising actress who some time ago became a tabloid fodder thanks to her career-destroying antics. The casting of Lohan would ensure coverage of the production itself, and then more ‘Can she manage a comeback’ chatter once the movie’s air date approached. It’s one way to get attention for a project, I guess. Another way is to create something of quality, but that would take time and effort, and expenditure of labor clearly wasn’t the point here.” — Maureen Ryan, The Huffington Post
