Sweet Hearts Dance (1988)

Sadly Over-hyped

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I read some of the other reviews here, and quite a few of these people don't understand the reason for this movie at all.It is not meant to titillate, amuse, or thrill you. It is a spot on slice of life movie about a couple who love each other, but don't understand why their lives are driving straight into the doldrums. They don't know how to communicate about it, and all they really need to succeed in their relationship is to do just that.There is a strong object lesson here that if watched and grasped, could save most marriages that fail for similar reasons.This is not to say that the movie is without charm to entertain, it has plenty. But I didn't give this movie a 9 for its straight entertainment value, I gave it a 9 for its relationship educational value.

Sweet Hearts Dance has a good cast of actors. Don Johnson was in a very popular period, Susan Sarandon doesn't need an introduction, and Jeff Daniels came from the success of "Purple rose of Cairo" and "Something wild". There were all the elements to be a good movie: an interesting subject (family divorce), the actors, a good screenwriter Ernest Thompson, who came from the copy of Academy Awarded winner "On the golden pond", but the movie failed the waits. The screenplay is very repetitive: it seems to be taken from a reduction of "Terms of endearment" (even Elizabeth Perkins phisically looks like Debra Winger) and from a series of similar movies. Don Johnson is very good in the part of the rebellious husband with a bad character but we don't understand where his intolerance comes. The movie doesn't explain this and expires in the usual stereotype of the couple in crisis after the first 15 years of marriage. The direction is so absent that often it doesn't understand if the actors improvise in order to give speed to the scenes or it was a decision of the screenwriter to think many slow and predictable scenes. However the story presents even very funny moments that are the only reason in order to see this movie.

warning: possible spoilersThis is the story of a couple (played by Susan Sarandon and Don Johnson), high school sweethearts who made the mistake of getting married and having kids. Now, 20 years later, they are separated and hate each other. Their brief interactions end in one's (usually Johnson's character's) rude, insensitive, or indifferent comment, followed by the other running away. After a couple of these interactions, I thought "now's the time when they sit down and try to work things out", since they clearly still "loved" each other (as all couples who fight constantly in the movies really "love" each other) and were in some kind of emotional pain. But this never happened. So, the movie's "plot" is the constant fighting.Presumably in some attempt to revitalize their relationship (I think the writer at least had the insight to realize he was boring the audience, so he gives us some fresh scenery to make up for the stale "plot"), Sarandon's character decides she want to go to the Caribbean with her hubby. She overhears him commenting on a sunbather's "hooters" (the best he's ever seen). Of course, not one for talking, she instead tries to sleep with her hubby's best friend.Like a good chap, he refuses, but as they lie in bed, hubby (of course) walks in and throws some furniture out of the sliding door. (Still no discussion.) But at least the best friend has enough emotional intelligence to suggest they "sleep it off"; they will feel better in the morning.The next evening, after hubby gives a brief "speech" (mostly rambling, but ends by saying he wants things better, meaning his marital relationship). that night in their motel room, wife asks hubby if he wants to see her naked. Of course, he does. He tells her she's beautiful; she asks "but not the best you've ever seen?" and gets mad when he doesn't appease her. They yell. And, FINALLY, in their yelling, he asks her what she wants. "I want us to love each other!!" "Well, that's just great because so do I!!". And they sleep together. After all that time, all they really needed was to yell a few nice words at each other. Ah, movie romance! In the last scene I could bear to watch, they seemed to have reverted back to childhood. They stole hubby's best friend's car (it's fire-engine red!!) and were attempting to put it to sea when hubby asked wifie if she'd go to the dance with him. This is when I turned it off, seeing no hope that it could re-direct itself and still make any sense at all.So, the moral of the story? Don't grow up. That only leads to complicated relationships and talking and all that nasty stuff. Sex might technically be for "grown-ups", but at least it's fun and you don't even have to talk afterwards! Maybe the writer was more clever than I gave him/her credit for, and the movie was really a satire on immature high school-sweetheart marriages. One can only hope.

This is quite a surprise -- a real charmer of a movie. Who knew that Don Johnson and Susan Sarandon could co-exist in the same movie -- and play so well? And with Elizabeth Perkins and Jeff Daniels, the charm and the good looks just ooze off the screen.