This version of the 1987 Farrah Fawcett miniseries is a longer European cut that runs almost five hours, which only demonstrates once again that sometimes less is more. The Charlie's Angels star plays miserable real-life heiress Barbara Hutton, granddaughter of tycoon Frank W. Woolworth (Burl Ives), whose successful chain of “five-and-dime” stores revolutionized American retailing. As this occasionally overheated but generally ponderous biopic shows, Hutton was raised in luxurious isolation by unstable parents: her father (played here by Kevin McCarthy) co-founded profitable investment firm E.F. Hutton but was a drunk and womanizer whose behavior drove her mother (Toria Fuller) to suicide when Barbara was six years old. As a consequence, Barbara grew up believing in nothing but empty self-gratification. Poor Little Rich Girl depicts Hutton's pattern of marrying undesirable men and paying them off when they inevitably failed to meet her needs. As the series progresses, we see Barbara courted by a succession of European twits; witness cringe-inducing sequences involving her tortured relationship with her only child Lance Reventlow (played at various ages by Robert Holman, Jonathan Brandis, and Linden Ashby); root for her one shot at stability with third husband Cary Grant (James Read); and finally watch her eventual exploitation by impoverished phony noblemen. Initially we feel sorry for Barbara, but as Poor Little Rich Girl drones on, the endless repetition of the film's message—money can't buy you love—becomes stultifying and viewers inevitably begin to lose their sense of empathy. Fawcett tries hard to do justice to the lead role, but she clearly doesn't have the requisite acting chops, and she's undercut by a script that plays Hutton's life as a soap opera without ever really coming to grips with the deep-rooted psychological problems that ultimately destroyed her. DVD extras are limited to text cast bios. Optional. (E. Hulse)
Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story
A&E, 2 discs, 300 min., not rated, DVD: $29.95 February 2, 2009
Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story
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