Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

They thoroughly come alive in this instant classic about show biz addiction and rejection.

Even without the sadness that now floods Bright Lights, it would still be a classic of its kind. It recalls the equally entertaining late-in-life portraits of wonderful, vicious broads like Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work and Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me.

A beauty that will mostly make you laugh and, of course, cry.

The film is surprisingly revealing, given the fact that its two subjects, in both similar and individual ways, are playing for the audience.

An affectionate and intimate documentary produced and directed by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens, gives a more balanced view of one of show business’s famous mother-daughter duos.

Simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Bright Lights shows both women knew that fame was just a distraction. The only thing that mattered was each other.

Sad as the coda to Bright Lights became, it’s a story with a whole lot of heart.

Originally scheduled to premiere in March, Bright Lights is a mirthful portrait of Reynolds’ and Fisher’s extraordinary connection above all else, even as it reminds viewers of the toll attachment can take on a body and spirit.

The documentary is never less than engaging, but as a piece of filmmaking, it’s rather shapeless. Now the deaths of Fisher and Reynolds give it an unintended shape and purpose. It captures these two extremely vital spirits in the very recent past, and makes you feel the loss of them even more sharply.

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is a droll, spirited, and disarmingly intimate documentary that now feels karmically timed.

Part-Grey Gardens, part-Baby Jane without the malice, Bright Lights is endlessly charming and sometimes deeply moving.

If the film is as disorderly in its structure as the messy family history it surveys, time spent with these wonderful subjects makes that seem sweetly appropriate.

While Bright Lights bounces between past and present, Bloom and Stevens wisely allow the narrative to wander where it wants, mirroring the daily lives of their subjects. Where Reynolds is a study in keeping it together, Fisher gives lessons in letting it all hang out.

Viewing it is therapeutic and wonderful, but also like going through an additional step in the stages of grief.

That they’re both gone without realizing the full impact they made is probably the saddest part of a very fun journey. Bloom and Stevens didn’t miss a beat.

Ms. Fisher’s often naked honesty on the page and in person, made her beloved to her many fans, as the flow of tributes proved last week. Her mother, conversely, represented an old-style “show must go on” tenacity that got her through the Fisher-Taylor scandal with poise and class, and perhaps made her beloved to another kind of fan. Both camps will find much to move them in Bright Lights, especially the profound bond between its subjects and the obstacles that were overcome to make it last.

It’s all warm and lovely and cozy and caustic and motherly and daughterly.

Now, in the weeks after their deaths, which came a day apart in late December, “Bright Lights” is something more than an intimate study in two very different approaches to fame; it’s also a lovely elegy.

Because the gently quirky celebrity documentary is an enjoyable if standardized format, the potency of Bright Lights sneaks up on you.

There’s more to the film than the messy, preternatural bond between these two multitalented women. Directed by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens and featuring intimate home movies filmed over decades, Bright Lights is also a thoughtful examination of the ripple effects of mental illness and addiction, the indignities of aging in Hollywood. Inevitably, given Fisher’s involvement, it is very, very funny.

As a film, it’s all over the place, but in some ways its crazy-quilt nature suits its subjects and succeeds as a touching portrait of a unique mother and daughter.

A wonderfully entertaining program, Bright Lights shows just how close the mother and daughter had become in recent years, living as neighbors on the same Beverly Hills compound that vaguely brings to mind “Grey Gardens” without the fallen-from-grace squalor.