I found Grey Garden's to be a gripping film, an amazingly intimate
look at too eccentrics who basically have the right idea: forget
society and live in a delapidated house with no heating and a huge
brood of cats and raccoons, persuing their own interests rather
mundainly, all the while chattering at the camera.
Big Edie and Little Edie are the two crazies that the Mazles Bros.
have chosen to document. They seem like characters out of a
Fellini film, only stranger, if that makes any sense. Old Edie is
almost fully bedridden, a pile of papers, clothes and dirty dishes
growing around her. Little Edie is even more interesting. She
prances around the house, always wearing a baboushka-like
headdress around her head, completely covering her hair. We
never see her hair throughout the film, nor do we ever get a hint
that she still has much. At age fifty eight, though, she is still
beautiful and full of life.
In Grey Gardens, we get the sense that both of these women's
lives have become much less than what they once were. Little
Edie is probably the sadder of the two. While her mother, in her
earlier years, got married, made a family, lived luxuriously and
even made some recordings (the scene where, at 77, she sings
along with a recording of "Tea for Two" she made decades ago is
one of the films best scenes), Edie left her promicing career as a
model to take care of her ailing mother. At 58, she still longed to
find her prince charming. If anything Little Edie is still a little girl,
full of dreams of glamour and fame, and of domestic and romantic
bliss, that have yet to be fulfilled.
Highlights of the film include the opening moments, where Little
Edie explains her outfit to the camera, the "tea for two" sequence,
the birthday party, the climactic argument, the grocery deliver
scene, and the scene in the attic. The whole thing is incredibly
candid and unpretencious. And it's made all the more remarcable
since it's all real.
I suggest seeing Grey Gardens back-to-back with the Kenneth
Anger short Puce Moment. The Criterion DVD is $35.00, but it's
worth every penny.

Whatever happened to Keaton is what I want to know.
Actually I don't, I crawled away, heaving, thinking she must owe half the bookies in Vegas, or maybe not, maybe she was just brainwashed, blackmailed and bored to death. Rich enough to adopt a third-world country, she somehow had to star in yet another cookie-cut, cliché-ridden drool'athon, based on the same character-franchise she's been rehashing since 'Father of the Bride'('91). You'd think she's going head to head with Mr.Bean.
(Spoilers)
So hubby (Dax) get's fired by obnoxious son of boss, his mom (Keaton)leaves his dad after classic row, and crashes over with her own dog-show in tow, oh those little rascals. Hubby's got cold-feet for diaper-duty, wifey's clock a-ticking and hey, let's toss in a space-cadet as second house-guest for good measure, all in one day because that's so funny and original. Wife gets fed up and walks away, mom leaves dad for space-cadet and the couple makes up in time for closing credits, 86 very long minutes later.
Now if you have to have a space-cadet, he can't be devious as well, he can't scheme some excuse for his stayover, and if mom leaves dad, she can't hop into a cab dressed as a pumpkin just because some scriptwriter agonized over how to cheer thing up.
Plus that gag whereby they invite her in only to then discover she's got her canine entourage in the cab has got to be outlawed by now. And you only get one obnoxious 2-dimensional boss to denigrate. Another movie-killer would be the movie-script the space cadet is toiling away at, supposedly more lame than the actual one, again, dejas-ad-nausea.
Liv Tyler doesn't seem happy here, her voice was weird at times, it had me wondering if they later had her redub some of it, and she's a smart one, she's handled great roles and we'll forgive her for Jersey Girl, it was disaster-prone, could happen to anyone. Dax Shepard was watchable and that's being generous considering the material.
Personally, it's the director, the screenwriters and especially the producers that I would love to see tar'n'feathered before shipped to Guantanamo as playthings for the prisoners, and that's me keeping this 'lite'.