Fun to watch Douglas trying to impersonate Liberace

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2013)

I was never a Liberace fan (although I never disliked him), and I strongly dislike both Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. I would never willingly see anything with either of those two actors in it. So why on earth did I watch this? I don't know, but I enjoyed it!
Neither of them is really a good actor. They obviously thought (and millions seem to agree) that they were breaking brave new ground and showcasing their immense talents in these roles, but they were just playing the same characters they (and all other Hollywood A-listers) always play: themselves, with enough makeup and choreography and voice coaching to vary the monotony enough to satisfy the mindless masses who pay to see them on screen.
The best I can say about Damon is that most of the time he's easy to ignore in this movie, at least when he has clothes on; his body is so weird that it hurts my eyes, but there's nearly always something interesting to look away at. His barely-suppressed homophobia (Damon's, not the character's) comes shining through in the interview on the DVD, and it comes in handy when he gets to repulse a request Douglas makes in one of their many sex scenes. That's only one of many reasons Damon has always given me the creeps: homosexuality gives HIM the creeps.
But Douglas... Ahhhh! He's nothing like Liberace, but I had a ball watching him just being little Michael Douglas speaking with a funny voice, moving in a funny way, and sporting killer makeup and killer duds. There's something fascinating about him despite my intense dislike of him as both a person and an actor.
Enjoying this movie won't turn me into a fan, but it was fun for the couple of hours it lasted. Not great fun, but fun enough not to turn off, which is quite a feat for a big-budget Hollywood movie.
One complaint: it was stupid to have Douglas recite rather than sing "The Impossible Dream" in his last scene. Liberace was a competent singer, and since Douglas evidently can't sing it was dumb not to have a singer dub his voice then. It could have been done seamlessly so the audience never suspected it wasn't him singing. His plodding recitation of the song's silly lyrics ruined what might otherwise have been a fabulous scene. It doesn't matter that Liberace recited it himself; it should have been sung in that scene.