If you've ever wondered how Alan Alda went from being one of the most popular figures in American entertainment after M.A.S.H to being an aging character actor playing small parts in other people's movies, Sweet Liberty is the reason. This thing is so appalling, I'm surprised it only crippled his career and didn't cause him to be retroactively expelled from the space-time continuum.
This movie tries to be about 8 different things and it sucks hard at all of them. It's about history professor Michael Burgess (Alan Alda) and his weird relationship with his girlfriend, Gretchen Carlsen (Lise Hilboldt). He desperately wants them to move in together and just as desperately doesn't want to get married. She doesn't want to get married or live together, just keep banging him. It's about Michael's even weirder relationship with his crazy mother (Lillian Gish), who sleeps on her own sofa and demands to be reunited with an old boyfriend she hasn't seen in decades. It's about Michael's fights with movie director Bo Hodges (Saul Rubink), who's comes to town to make a movie out of Michael's book on the American revolution. Saul wants to make it into a teenager-pleasing piece of crap that's all about defying authority, blowing stuff and people getting naked. Michael wants it to be historically accurate with everyone wearing the right kind of hat.
Sweet Liberty is also about Michael's relationship with the movie's lead actress, Faith Healy (Michelle Pfeiffer). You see, Gretchen conveniently breaks up with him right before the movie starts production and Michael falls in love with the character Faith is portraying. Michael appears to be some sort of idiot savant, capable of writing a successful book but incapable of recognizing when an actress is acting. He also has to worry about the movie's lead actor, Elliot James (Michael Caine), who's like an overgrown child who only cares about fencing, driving recklessly and sleeping with as many women as possible. Helping Michael navigate the minefield of the movie's production screenwriter Stanley Gould (Bob Hoskins), who wrote the script based on Michael's book even though Stanley acts more like a Catskills comedian or a vaudevillian stage comic than a writer.
The film also wastes time on Elliot's adulterous affair with a local woman and a feud between the stuntmen working on the movie and the local American Revolution re-enactors who've been hired on as extras.
Now, if any of the things I've just described seem even vaguely interesting, I apologize for misleading you. Sweet Liberty isn't funny, it isn't clever, it isn't engaging or enjoyable on any level. I t is sad and pathetic to watch Hollywood legend Lillian Gish lamely attempt to ham her way through a "wacky" old lady role that couldn't have been more poorly written if it had been done by a 5 year old orphan. Lise Hilboldt moronically grins her way through every scene, no matter the context, like she was heavily medicated for the entire production. Alda's direction is incompetent and his script is a jangled mess.
Sweet Liberty is proof positive that there had to have been a lot of extremely talented people working on M.A.S.H. because despite his star status, it's clear that Alda couldn't have had much to do with the show's success.
This movie tries to be about 8 different things and it sucks hard at all of them. It's about history professor Michael Burgess (Alan Alda) and his weird relationship with his girlfriend, Gretchen Carlsen (Lise Hilboldt). He desperately wants them to move in together and just as desperately doesn't want to get married. She doesn't want to get married or live together, just keep banging him. It's about Michael's even weirder relationship with his crazy mother (Lillian Gish), who sleeps on her own sofa and demands to be reunited with an old boyfriend she hasn't seen in decades. It's about Michael's fights with movie director Bo Hodges (Saul Rubink), who's comes to town to make a movie out of Michael's book on the American revolution. Saul wants to make it into a teenager-pleasing piece of crap that's all about defying authority, blowing stuff and people getting naked. Michael wants it to be historically accurate with everyone wearing the right kind of hat.
Sweet Liberty is also about Michael's relationship with the movie's lead actress, Faith Healy (Michelle Pfeiffer). You see, Gretchen conveniently breaks up with him right before the movie starts production and Michael falls in love with the character Faith is portraying. Michael appears to be some sort of idiot savant, capable of writing a successful book but incapable of recognizing when an actress is acting. He also has to worry about the movie's lead actor, Elliot James (Michael Caine), who's like an overgrown child who only cares about fencing, driving recklessly and sleeping with as many women as possible. Helping Michael navigate the minefield of the movie's production screenwriter Stanley Gould (Bob Hoskins), who wrote the script based on Michael's book even though Stanley acts more like a Catskills comedian or a vaudevillian stage comic than a writer.
The film also wastes time on Elliot's adulterous affair with a local woman and a feud between the stuntmen working on the movie and the local American Revolution re-enactors who've been hired on as extras.
Now, if any of the things I've just described seem even vaguely interesting, I apologize for misleading you. Sweet Liberty isn't funny, it isn't clever, it isn't engaging or enjoyable on any level. I t is sad and pathetic to watch Hollywood legend Lillian Gish lamely attempt to ham her way through a "wacky" old lady role that couldn't have been more poorly written if it had been done by a 5 year old orphan. Lise Hilboldt moronically grins her way through every scene, no matter the context, like she was heavily medicated for the entire production. Alda's direction is incompetent and his script is a jangled mess.
Sweet Liberty is proof positive that there had to have been a lot of extremely talented people working on M.A.S.H. because despite his star status, it's clear that Alda couldn't have had much to do with the show's success.