by Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier
Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Liza Minnelli, Peter Allen, Alan Cumming, Mia Farrow, Joel Grey, George Hamilton, Ben Rimalower
Intro:
Fun and breezy, Truly Terrific Absolutely True is as flashy and flimsy as one of Liza’s trademark sequin dresses.
Spanning her entire career – from beneath the shadow of her mother Judy Garland, to the heights of fame in the 1970s, to the numerous marriages that she collected along the way – new documentary Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story has much to say of its eponymous subject.
Perhaps, also, this is where the film’s rather wordy title and its content have something in common: it’s all rather long-winded.
Among the huge quantities of archival footage, much of it genuinely brilliant, we have frequent asides from those who knew – and loved – Liza, as well as reflections from the great diva herself.
The balance between who we hear from across the film is disappointingly muddled, however.
Yes, there is plenty from Liza today, still full of glitter and gusto, often breaking into song as she recounts a well-worn anecdote. But there is a large amount of airtime given to more tangential links to Liza, some of whom don’t appear to have even met her.
An especially egregious example of this is the theatre director Ben Rimalower, whose effusive input on Liza’s cultural significance stems from sideline obsessions, and not from actual experience.
That this person, who had seemingly never shared a room with Liza Minnelli, is given as much airtime as the documentary’s namesake typifies the rather janky editing process of Truly Terrific Absolutely True.
Much of the new interview footage was shot in early 2022, but the film’s release at the end of 2024 gives an idea of how much time was spent assembling all of the archival images and film footage.
Yes, this footage is fabulous – a snapshot of 1960s panache and the bohemian decadence of the 1970s – but it doesn’t have much to say. This film is Liza, all Liza. We leave with an understanding of what she did, but little of the times and cultural moments of which she was a part.
As such, this documentary does not interrogate the social landscapes in which her fame ascended and then detonated, but instead, reads as a by-the-numbers glance at her biggest hits and some of the nice clothes she wore along the way.
Fun and breezy, Truly Terrific Absolutely True is as flashy and flimsy as one of Liza’s trademark sequin dresses.
