Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking

I just watched this hugely entertaining tell-all, a rental from Netflix. If I weren't in the habit of sending the discs back immediately, I'd have watched it again. Carrie Fisher is clearly a highly intelligent -- if deeply neurotic --woman, but her frankness and wit even out the score. She skewers everyone in her path, but with such humor and self-deprecation that she has the audience with her all the way. She strikes me as someone who would be fun to know. But.... Perhaps at a slight distance. As others have written, the best part of the show is the Hollywood Genealogy Chart, and boy, does she have fun with it! So do we. Eddie Fisher, her father, receives most of the poisoned darts, but he clearly deserved them. But she must have forgiven him long ago; the show is dedicated to him.

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.

Quite entertaining. The woman was the closest thing we had to the great wit Dorothy Parker.

Carrie wasn't crazy, she was just too darn smart and sensitive for this stinking world.

Rest in peace brilliant princess.

Carrie Fisher's one woman show is, in a word, hilarious.

Fisher tells it all, growing up in Hollywood, having Eddie Fisher for a father, the Liz-Debbie-Eddie triangle, Princess Leia, her drug addiction, and her "invitation to a mental hospital." She gives us a look via a big board of Hollywood Genealogy 101 ("but don't worry, Eddie wasn't alone for long...") filled with pictures and arrows of her parents, their spouses, their children, and her own two marriages and daughter, trying to find out if her daughter and another young man on the board could date, or were they, in fact, related?

Due to his retention of the Star Wars licensing, Fisher advises us that George Lucas owns her image and likeness so that "every time I look in the mirror, I have to pay him a few bucks." And she tells the audience, "If you have a chance to be a Pez dispenser, DO IT."

All in all, a fun evening, obviously from the mind that brought us the entertaining "Postcards from the Edge." Fisher sees the irony in life and mines it up and down roller coaster ride for all the humor there is. She is, after all, the daughter of Debbie Reynolds, who was nominated for an Oscar for "The Unsinkable Molly Brown"..."but lost to Julie Andrews for her multilayered, emotional, deep performance of Mary Poppins."

I've never been the biggest Carrie Fisher fan! I've loved her books and screenplays like the wonderful "Postcards From The Edge", but I've never really gone for Star Wars movies.

Still, I adore her personality and strengths. This act is hysterically funny and moving! I simply love her charm and wit. She never wallows in self-pity like so many other movie stars. She can look back on her problems and make something funny out of them, which is something I always encourage. Why take life so seriously?

Also, who knew she had such a lovely singing voice? Why hasn't she ever done a movie musical or done something on Broadway. The Great White Way is ready for you, my dear!

Why sit down and explain it? Just go out there and rent or buy it! It's a terrific hour and a half of fun!