Sweet Liberty (1986)......is in no way the funniest of 1980's comedies, but we always found it to be among the most charming and wittily written of the bunch.
Writer-director and star of the film, Alan Alda poured on the charm part, while Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine, Michelle Pfeiffer and Saul Rubinek supplied the laughs.
We instantly fell in love with the whole concept here......with Alda playing a New England history professor who's written a nationwide best seller filled with action, drama and romance.......about the American Revolution.
Hollywood knows a hot property when it sees one, and after the book's snapped up for a movie adaptation, an entire film crew, complete with two superstars, comes rolling into the little town to film the story right where it happened.
Virtually all the expected culture clashes occur as Alda and his quirky fellow townspeople collide with the manic, ego-fueled personalities of the Hollywood crowd.
Alda finds himself an unlikely script doctor as he collaborates on the rotten, illiterate screenplay scribbled by a ultra-hyper hack (Hoskins at his most hilariously hammy). He also finds himself crossing swords, sometimes literally, with the Errol Flynn-like leading man (Caine, also very funny) and falling for the stunning leading lady,(Pfeiffer) whose method acting process has her always speaking in the refined cadence of her 18th century character.......except when she's really pissed off.
The filmmaking process gets a gentle ribbing throughout, and if 'Sweet Liberty' has a villain, it's the the studio director played deftly by Saul Rubinek. He's made to look like a hip new movie brat in the Spielberg-DePalma mold, but his character's a pandering philistine, more like Michael Bay, in his devotion to three golden rules of 80's movies.......defiance of authority, destruction of property and nudity.
Watching Alda navigate his way through these West Coast crazies kept us permanently smiling, along with more than few LOL moments. And even if his upending and thwarting of Rubinek's three golden rules in the middle of a battle scene seems inevitable, it's still damn funny.
And we don't want to forget the bonus bittersweet subplot involving Alda's dementia-afflicted mother, played by the then 93 year old cinema icon Lillian Gish.....even more icing on the cake.
35 years later, BQ still finds 'Sweet Liberty' as sweet a treat as ever. And in these turbulent times, a welcome, comforting re-discovery. 4 stars (****).
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