Wishful Drinking

The results is an unapologetically whiny--but funny!--and often plays lika (successful) audition tape for The View.

Occasionally, Fisher's one-liners (the title included) overreach into silliness, but as directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato--whose examinations of notorious women include "Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal," "Monica in Black and White" and "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"--Wishful Drinking plays like a knowing valentine to the boozy, blowsy, "Mad Men"-era days of Hollywood.

HBO does an expert job of turning Ms. Fisher's 2 hour and 20 minute monologue into a documentary, with only a few, artfully chosen embellishments.

She's at her best mapping out the messy web of relationships that come with being the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and the late Eddie Fisher. [20 Dec 2010, p.44]

Her observations throughout Wishful Drinking are incisive and funny. But at times the production, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, gets a little bogged down in minutiae.

This is not one of those emotional journeys in which the teller comes finally to forgive herself and the world and we get out our handkerchiefs. Craziness is Fisher's baseline--Wishful Drinking begins and ends before the image of a padded cell--and clarity the thing she buys with comedy. Life will kill you, she seems to say: You might as well laugh.

Ultimately, Fisher comes across like that overly intelligent, entertaining, articulate analysand who has her own story all figured out, but still doesn't know how to let it go.