\n<\/p>\n
To tell her story, the director Bruce David Klein has assembled a trove of archival material \u2014 culled from films, television, newsreels and the like \u2014 that he has woven together with a number of original interviews and divided into chapters. These largely focus on her relationships with various men and women, friends and lovers, who helped Minnelli find her way after Garland\u2019s death in 1969 at 47, a still-shocking age. Liza was 23 when her mother died and her death may have brought some relief because of Garland\u2019s deeply troubled past and health issues, as Minnelli\u2019s longtime friend Mia Farrow couches it on camera. \u201cSo, what\u2019s next?\u201d the singer Michael Feinstein then asks, before helping to answer that question.<\/p>\n
What follows is by turns inspiring, jaw-dropping \u2014 the songs! the successes! the sequins! \u2014 and conspicuously incomplete. Given the winking title this isn\u2019t a surprise. Much like the recent documentary \u201cFaye,\u201d about the life and times of Faye Dunaway, \u201cA Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story\u201d is a largely enjoyable, cozily intimate movie that plays like it was made by a fan. That shouldn\u2019t necessarily be a problem; love can be a fine place to start when making any movie. Yet because Minnelli has been a public figure her entire life \u2014 she was a toddler when she held her mother\u2019s hand in the 1949 film \u201cIn the Good Old Summertime<\/a>\u201d \u2014 her story is better known than most and, at times, it was far grimmer than suggested here.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to understand why the documentary skims over some of the most difficult periods in Minnelli\u2019s life. After a stage-setting introduction, it opens on her mother\u2019s death, which seems like an attempt to put her in the rearview mirror. The problem is that Garland, unsurprisingly, remained a powerful force in her daughter\u2019s life. Klein addresses that to a degree, examining how Minnelli \u2014 with help from the likes of the entertainer and writer Kay Thompson<\/a> \u2014 developed a voice and performance style distinct from her mother\u2019s. Even so, it is hard to grasp how Minnelli even survived childhood. Her heaviest burden, as Gerald Clarke writes in \u201cGet Happy,\u201d a sympathetic biography of Garland, was \u201cbeing on permanent death watch.\u201d<\/p>\n For Minnelli true believers such quibbles may not matter. The clips are great and so are some of the interviews, notably those with her, Feinstein and Ben Vereen. It is, as it turns out, awfully nice to spend time with Minnelli, to revisit triumphs like Bob Fosse\u2019s \u201cCabaret<\/a>\u201d (1972) and her TV special, \u201cLiza With a \u2018Z,\u2019\u201d released that same year. Mind you, the lack of attention given to \u201cNew York, New York<\/a>\u201d (1977), Martin Scorsese\u2019s under-loved musical, is eyebrow-raising. It was a vexed production, they had an affair and it flopped, so maybe that\u2019s why it gets short shrift here. But, really, who cares? Anything that encourages you to rewatch \u201cCabaret\u201d and \u201cNew York, New York\u201d \u2014 and, reader, I did just that \u2014 deserves some love.<\/p>\n Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story<\/strong>
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n