why all the hate for liz taylor?

She is dubbed for the first number, and that voice is completely characterless. It would have been better had she sung it all, no matter what the results. I don't think she even took a single singing lesson for this, and it shows woefully. Not really in the quality of the voice, but in the direction she's going in, where she's aiming with the song. She's just completely at sea...and utterly limp.

I think her performance is lazy and awful. She could have been a delightful Desiree had she been halfway AWAKE, but I think this was made during her addiction period, before she dried out? She's just out of it...and shows barely a spark of even personal magnetism, which you'd hope she could at least dredge up a smidgen of.

I agree. I think Taylor's performance has a lot of charm. Even the film does--tho it is badly directed, atrociously edited and disastrously photographed. The basic material can't be ruined and Diana Rigg is simply sensational.

Taylor's off-screen miseries at the time--Burton's re-marriage, her rebound engagement to John Warner and her increasing slide into alcoholism--are evident in her appearance. But, Desiree is not supposed to be young at all, and the movie is full of remarks about her age, etc. I feel her performance is poignant, and as with so many of her films, addresses some of her real-life issues ("If I don't make something happen soon, I'm going to playing 'Camille' for the rest of my life," says Desiree. In marrying Warner and "retiring" to private life (tho it was never at all such a thing) she was attempting--again per Desiree: "coherence, after so many years of muddle."

I watched the film tonight, about 38 years after it was made. I agree that Harold Prince's direction is terrible, and just about destroys almost everything that could have been charming. Elizabeth Taylor did not deserve the vitriolic reviews that were heaped on her in 1977. Wonderful Diana Rigg owns every minute of her screen time. Ms. Rigg says one word, "Plague," and soon after that, when she enunciates the two words "Remote youth," I smile at the perfection I have witnessed. Many people are fond of "Send in the Clowns." The precise comic irony of Sondheim's "A Weekend in the Country," has complicated staging, and survives Prince's direction. It's surprising that there's never been a Broadway revival. I would have liked to have seen friends Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury do this musical. That would have been wonderful casting.