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Barrymore

Critic's Pick Critics' Pick

(No longer in theaters)
  • Rating: No Rating
  • Director: Erik Canuel   Cast: Christopher Plummer, John Plumpis
  • Running Time: 83 minutes
  • Reader Rating: Write a Review

Genre

Drama

Producer

Christopher Plummer, Kevin Albrecht, Steve Kalafer, Peter LeDonne, Gene Saks

Distributor

Independent Pictures

Release Date

Nov 15, 2012

Release Notes

NY/LA

Official Website

Review

Christopher Plummer grew up idolizing John Barrymore as both a ham of genius and a self-destructive lush. He managed to arrest his own downward spiral, but in 1997 had a chance to channel Barrymore’s in William Luce’s play Barrymore. Revived in 2010, it’s now a dandy film directed by Erik Canuel. It takes place in a theater in which the ravaged, ruined alcoholic rehearses for a comeback that will never come—all while boozing, declaiming Shakespeare, and trading insults with an offstage prompter. God, I love Plummer’s performance—the twiddling fingers, the tipsy sway of the head, the reverberating roar, as well as the pathos of a man who can’t stop acting long enough to hear the cry of his own soul. The best part is last: Plummer as Barrymore as Richard III—raising goosebumps and, I’m almost sure, the dead.