Sweet Liberty

It was not too much of a strain for Alan Alda to do Sweet Liberty as his character of Hawkeye Pierce from MASH stepped right from the small screen to the big. Imagine Hawkeye as an American history professor writing a book on the southern theater of the American Revolution and you've got a start to Sweet Liberty.

Alda has not only written a book, but it was so good that he got some big bucks from Hollywood for the screen rights. And the company is going to film on location in North Carolina where Alda teaches history at a college and where he participates in the annual recreation of the Battle of Cowpens. But one read of what the Hollywood writers have done to his work and he's ready to sue.

Well that's not going to work because they've got the contract and the lawyers to back them up. How to salvage his work, for that he turns to screenwriter Bob Hoskins to help him navigate the ways of the movie business jungle. Hoskins too would like to see his name on something worthwhile and maybe Academy Award winning.

This involves Alda wooing in a different way stars of the film Michael Caine and Michelle Pheiffer. Caine is quite a wooer himself and the best performance from the supporting cast is that of Lois Chiles who plays Caine's wife who's decided he's been on too long a leash.

But in the scenes he's in Bob Hoskins truly steals Sweet Liberty. He's the quintessential Hollywood man who drags Alan Alda along through the highways and byways of movie speak. Saul Rubinek is also good as a most harassed and egotistical director.

I would like to have seen more of Lillian Gish playing Alda's dotty mother who wants to hook up with a bricklayer she had a LONG ago fling with. It's that way with Alzheimer's patients they remember something from ages ago, but not what they had for dinner yesterday. All I can say was the sex must have been fabulous.

Sweet Liberty is nice sparkling comedy about the business of making movies.

"Sweet Liberty" is quite a surprise, as Alan Alda wrote, directed and stars in this film...something he also did with "Betsy's Wedding". And, I was actually impressed with all of the roles he took on in this most unusual film.

The story is set in some small town where Professor Burgess is a history teacher. But the entire town, as well as Burgess' life, are thrown into a dither when a movie crew arrives to film a movie based on one of Burgess' books. During the process of making the film, Burgess learns a lot about the filmmaking business....most of which is disappointing to say the least. The biggest disappointment is that the screenwriter (Bob Hoskins) has completely butchered his Revolutionary War story....and Burgess spends much of the film working to make sure the film is as good and historically accurate as possible...given that many of the folks making the picture are bonkers and couldn't care less about realism!

This is a movie where the plot seems less important than the characters and dialog...which I don't think is a bad thing at all. Character driven stories are often delightful...and Alda's dialog and characters truly are delightful. In fact, it makes me feel sad that he didn't write more films. It also makes you wonder how much of the weirdness of the story represents the real eccentricities of the filmmakers and actors...especially Michael Caine's incredibly strange and semi-unhinged character! Overall, a lot of fun and a film which really is unique and memorable.

Alan Alda plays an historian who has written about an historical character. When his book is made into a film, the character he feels he knows so well is brought to life by an actress. The history he knows so well is translated into an "historical" film, with the fact gradually draining away. The film gently, lyrically plays on the interface between reality and fantasy.

An irony is that in "Sweet Liberty" Michael Caine plays an actor who plays a character based on Banastre Tarleton, a British commander of Tory troops in America during the Revolution. In 2000, the German director Roland Emmerich made a film called Patriot in which Jason Isaacs plays a character based on Banastre Tarleton. In the Emmerich film, the fact has drained away and the British commit atrocities more appropriate to Germans in the Second World War.

Alan Alda, still trying to be Hollywood's Everyman, wrote, directed and starred in SWEET LIBERTY,a relatively entertaining comedy about a small town professor who has written a book about what went on his town during the revolutionary war and has sold the film rights. The film chronicles the arrival of the film crew to do the film on location and Alda's exasperation at all the changes they want to make to his book; however, his attitudes toward what they are doing to his book take a back seat when he meets the film's leading lady (Michelle Pfeiffer) who apparently physically resembles the character she is playing to a T but as Alda finds, out is nothing like her. This movie is just so Alan Alda and like all of his movies, the characters all seem to talk and think like Alda but I have come to expect this from an Alda movie after THE FOUR SEASONS. Alda has assembled an impressive cast including Michael Caine as a hammy actor and Bob Hoskins, extremely amusing as the screenwriter who pretends to want Alda's input on his screenplay while seeking his constant approval at the same time. The film does run out of steam before fade out, but Alda and company manage to keep it afloat for most of the ride.

I like this very silly movie about the making of a movie set during the Revolutionary War. History takes a back seat to the backstage madness as film crew invades a small town in the American South... ...except that this film was filmed on Long Island. Living on the Island I get great joy watching all the technical gaffes in the film, only the lead characters cars have non-New York license plates, a Long Island Railway Train goes by in the background and on it goes. You don't have to have sharp eyes to see the errors, they are glaring if you know that they are there. They don't take away from the fun, they add to it since as Alan Alda's character quickly finds out, there is nothing real about making movies.

The cast is great across the board, with everyone seeming to have such a good time its infectious.

See this movie, its just a lot of fun.