Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking (2010)

I love this movie so much

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The 1-2 punch of Carrie Fisher's and Debbie Reynolds' deaths was a fitting, but tragic, end to a year unprecedented in the number of famous/recognizable people who passed on. And for nerds, Carrie's death cut especially deep. As is the case when a celebrity dies, interest in their work surges for a time as people re-explore (or discover for the first time) why we fell in love with these people in the first place. Like most people, I'm familiar with Carrie Fisher through her work as Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise, but only recently did I realize that she was a prolific writer. WISHFUL DRINKING was her first directly autobiographical work, based on a life which many people might envy if it weren't for all of the mental illness, drug addiction, etc. And based on this stand-up special, she was also a brilliant comedienne. Essentially a chronological overview of her life, it was filled with hilarious anecdotes and delivered with her trademark self-deprecation. Rarely have laughter and sadness coexisted so closely. And now that she's gone, the ending takes on a new poignancy. If you're a Carrie Fisher fan, I highly recommend checking this out if you haven't already (and her books, too).

Carrie Fisher's one-woman Broadway show is a laid back treatise on life as a celebrity and a celebrity spawn. Fisher dishes on her famous parents but doesn't dig too deeply into her own battles with drugs, alcohol and celebrity. The highlight is a giant chalkboard of her famous family tree with which she tries to discern whether her daughter should date a man that may or may not be a relative. And yes, she dons the famous braids to remind us of the opportunity that allowed her to step out of her famous parents' shadow and into cultural iconography. All in all, Fisher is honest, blunt, and a bit too relaxed at times to add anything but kick-back giggles, but to ask more may be just wishful thinking.

Carrie Fisher's one woman show "Wishful Drinking" is one of the most devastatingly frank pieces of theater in recent memory. At heart, this monologue was a sort of catharsis for a woman that has lived most of her life in show business. Coming from that rarefied environment, Ms. Fisher does not mince words in telling her audiences aspects of a life she has lived, most of it in the public eye. She bares her soul in an account that is hilarious, as well as sad. One can feel her pain as she goes on to tell the story of her life.Ms. Fisher, an intelligent woman, has put together a fun show in which she interacts with her audiences in ways that endears her to the people that come to see her. She recalls her golden childhood lived in that make believe world where her famous parents, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds created, only to see it come to a complete stop when her father left home to pursue a glamorous star that happened to be a close friend. Her illustration of the people in her life on a big board, and how everyone is related, is one of the best segments in the show.Her own experience with the man she loved, Paul Simon, is also examined for the pain it caused her. Her claim to fame, as Princess Leia is another hysterical chapter of her life. The relationship with George Lucas is examined by bringing aspects one never knew. We get to know funny details about that chapter of her life with her disarming delivery of the way it really was.The show was directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato as Ms. Fisher performed in front of a live audience in South Orange, New Jersey.

I know that I'll be in the minority here, but I did not like this Carrie Fisher one-woman show.Besides her rather obnoxious voice, she prances around the stage and discusses items that really shouldn't have been brought up again. We didn't need to hear about her relationship with her parents and how her father went from one woman to another after his divorce from Liz Taylor. Equally in poor taste, we didn't have to hear about Debbie's love life after Eddie. She didn't miss any details.Some of the funny lines included Debbie losing the 1964 best actress Oscar for "Unsinkable Molly Brown" to Julie Andrews's "Mary Poppins." The way she describe it, making Andrews a dramatic performer there was funny.Even George Lucas, Carrie Fisher's director in 1977's "Star Wars" comes under unnecessary scrutiny.Both at the beginning and end, Ms. Fisher sings "Happy Days are Here Again." To me, that was achieved when the show ended.The show was in poor taste and that board showing the Fisher-Reynolds lineage was a joke, and a bad one at that.