‘Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story’ Review – A Glitzy But Distant Look At The Legend Of Liza Minnelli

How do you create a legend?

That is the driving question behind Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, the new documentary about Liza Minnelli, a certified icon of stage, screen, and song. The scion of Hollywood royalty Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Liza Minnelli carved out her own space in the pantheon of the arts, receiving an Oscar, an Emmy, four Tonys, and two honorary Grammys throughout her half-century-plus-long career. Director Bruce David Klein peels back the layers of accolades, adoration, and even scandal to interrogate how Liza became Liza. Marrying behind-the-scenes and archival footage from her life to interviews with the people who knew and loved her best, topped with occasional conversations with the woman herself, Klein seeks to emphasize how much work, from the start, went into the public persona that has fascinated the world since her birth.

It is an admirable and, some would argue, necessary goal in theory. The current zeitgeist is actively pushing back against the concept of the “nepo baby,” arts and entertainment figures with well-known familial connections in the industry that helped them achieve their stardom. Liza Minnelli is nowhere near the first nepo baby, but she may be the most consequential of the transitional period between Golden Age Hollywood and New Hollywood. After all, her filmmaking father can claim six films in the National Film Registry, while her mother is Judy Garland, one of history’s most beloved entertainment figures. Some younger generations, perhaps lacking the context of her career, could too easily write Minnelli off as the progenitor of one of the industry’s most hotly contested trends. (They would be egregiously wrong, but that hasn’t stopped anyone before.)

To combat that effort, Klein crafts an unassailable narrative of how much of the Liza Minnelli we’re familiar with today was a painstaking creation, with multiple cooks in the glitzy kitchen. He introduces a bevy of collaborators, contemporaries, influences, and inspirations who can all lay a sliver of claim to the EGOT winner’s success. We first meet Kay Thompson, an entertainment polyglot (and author of the Eloise children’s books) who became an indispensable resource to Liza after Judy Garland died in 1969, doing everything from planning the funeral to helping Liza redefine her identity. The French pop singer Charles Aznavour follows in the next chapter, giving Liza a framework for live performance that would make her concerts among the hottest tickets in town. (Aznavour was also one of Liza’s lovers.) Halston, Bob Fosse, John Kander, and Fred Ebb; the remarkable list goes on. 

When you think about the challenges Liza could face as the child of Hollywood legends (and the ones she did face, including substance abuse and health problems), there is comfort in seeing how strong her support system was behind the scenes. However, there are times when Liza gets lost as the spotlight leaves her to shine on her support system. I found myself asking, for instance, whether the documentary was about Thompson as Klein digs deeper into her accomplishments and even her feelings (including, possibly, envy) about Liza. Granted, knowing what about these people warranted Liza’s trust and adherence to their guidance is helpful. However, in a documentary that seeks to paint Liza as a meticulous artist destined for stardom, regardless of who her parents were, the heavy focus on people not named Liza is puzzling. 

Perhaps one reason is how much access or availability Klein had to Liza. While the documentary certainly reads as a sanctioned work about Liza’s life, you sense that there were some places that Klein couldn’t go. Her relationship with her mother seems to be one. The documentary begins with Garland’s death but glosses over its impact on Liza, shifting to Kay Thompson’s role in her life. The film returns to the subject of Garland but in the context of Liza (understandably) shirking away from her legacy. There are only glimpses of insight into Liza’s childhood and what impact it might’ve had on her career. (The footage of them performing in London is stellar.) Liza’s love life is similarly opaque, discussed by Liza’s friends and colleagues but from a comfortable distance. (No one seemed particularly interested in discussing the late David Gest, her last husband and manager.)

Liza’s presence, or lack thereof, makes the documentary less insightful than you’d hope. She does sit down for an interview, and when she’s on-screen, she’s as luminous and resplendent as she was in her Liza with a Z television concert special. She’s warm, self-effacing, and isn’t afraid of some colorful language here and there. However, for reasons I’d rather not speculate about, her screen time is limited to one or two appearances across multiple chapters. The film deeply misses her when she’s off-screen, and it adds to the sense that we’re missing something from this documentary that keeps us from truly feeling her impact on the entertainment world. The film we get is a glitzy, glamorous primer on creating a legend, but you can’t help but want more for someone of her stature.

Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber.