Image Entertainment has announced and detailed the Blu-ray release of writer/director Erik Canuel and Academy Award-winner Christopher Plummer's Barrymore, adapted from the 1996 stage play of the same name by William Luce. Recently nominated for two PRISM Awards including Performance in a Feature Film, Barrymore arrives on May 7th.
The film tells the story of John Barrymore (Plummer), who rents an old theatre and begins rehearsing for a backer's audition to raise money for a revival of his 1920 triumph in Richard III. At the height of his remarkable career, Barrymore was the most celebrated entertainer of his generation. The reigning king of both Broadway and Hollywood, his decline and fall from grace was the tragic result of a self-destructive spiral into vice and excess. And now, with his career in tatters, he makes one final attempt to reclaim his former glory on the stage in this powerful, heartbreaking, humorous and compassionate portrait of a tortured soul and living legend.
Plummer, 82, has long had a fascination with the title character, and it shows. The Village Voice exclaims, "Christopher Plummer re-creates his Tony-winning performance as the charming louse in his booze-addled final days. Blessed with a script that is witty, insightful to the workings of the narcissistic Hollywood psyche, and often wonderfully bitchy, the film is also a wistful look at faded dreams and opportunities lost due to both the vagaries of the business and self-sabotage."
Special features include a behind-the-scenes documentary, "Backstage With Barrymore," featuring Helen Mirren, Julie Andrews and Zoe Caldwell.