Sweet Dreams (1985)

Sadly Over-hyped

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I saw this on HBO and thought it was pretty decent, if somewhat brief. It was one of many biopics to hit the theatres in the 80s, and this one wasn't that well known. However, it saw a revival when it hit HBO.I can't remember too much of it other than I wasn't sure that Jessica Lange was the right actress for the role. Even so the film is kind of endearing. How much if fact and how much is fiction I don't really know, and is probably a job for an actual documentary on the singer's life.Pretty good production values, well shot. If you're a Patsy Cline fan then give this a shot.Enjoy.

Jessica Lange doesn't do her own singing as country legend Patsy Cline, however that hardly matters because the cadences of her speaking voice are musical. Lange hits some husky, lusty low-notes as the Virginia-born singer who met second husband Charlie Dick (Ed Harris) in 1956 while performing in a local bar, later staying by him through thin times (her pregnancy forcing her off a tour, his stint in the Army after being drafted) and tentative success (a hit record, "Walkin' After Midnight", which she first performed on a TV talent program). Robert Getchell's script has some crackling dialogue, but the episodes of Cline's hard struggle for country-western success as well as her tempestuous marriage to hellraiser Dick are needlessly stretched out; there's too much struggle and too much temperament, and the film begins to seem like an uphill climb (it's exhausting). For a major production with A-list talent, "Sweet Dreams" also looks a little drab and ordinary, without the location flavor of an earlier bio-pic, "Coal Miner's Daughter". Oscar-nominated Lange matches up well with Ann Wedgeworth as her mama, and her angry love for rascal Harris is well conveyed, but the highlights of Patsy Cline's career are tucked away in the folds of the domestic dramaturgy. **1/2 from ****

This is a really good movie. I'm not sure of it's accuracy to Patsy's life, but I was pretty stunned at Patsy's crudeness. She always seemed so lady-like. Jessica Lange was the perfect choice for Patsy, not Beverly DeAngelo. I did not like Ed's portrayal of Charlie simply because I never liked him until recent years. He's grown on me. I watched this movie for the first time several years ago and was shocked at how her death was portrayed. I was born and raised in Camden, Tennessee (where the accident happened- NOT Dyersburg!) and there are no mountains. When the plane crashed, it was night and there had been a severe thunderstorm in the area.

Reality is generally more complicated than any motion picture can possibly convey--and such is the case with SWEET DREAMS, the 1985 bio-pic of singer Patsy Cline, which ran into a firestorm of criticism at the time of its release. For Patsy Cline was not a figure from the remote past. She and her life were extremely well recalled by family, friends, and co-workers, and one and all attacked the film as an extremely inaccurate portrait of her, her husband Charlie, and her life and career.To a certain extent, the validity of these complaints about the film are a matter of opinion. But it does seem likely that the script softened Cline's harder edges and over-emphasized the stormy nature of her marriage in order to cast her in the role of victim. What isn't opinion is the way the film treats her career: it didn't happen like that, and while the film presents her as a great star at the time of her death in truth she had released only a handful of widely distributed records by 1963--and while some of them were big hits, they weren't quite as big as you might think. Even the celebrated "Sweet Dreams" never made it to the top spot on any music chart, and it was not until well after her death that she received full recognition for her remarkable work.So instead of truth, or even a good approximation of it, SWEET DREAMS gives us the legend, the folk tale of the rough-and-tumble girl with the big, emotional voice who came from no where, married an abusive husband, and leaped into stardom that was cut short by an untimely death. And as legend, the film works very well.The weak point of the film is the script, which plays largely to a "domestic drama" aspect and tends to smooth out the characters in a "santized for your protection" sort of way. The direction and cinematography are no great shakes either, and ultimately SWEET DREAMS looks very much like a made-for-television movie. But the cast carries it off in fine style. Jessica Lang looks no more like Patsy Cline than I do, and her lip-scynchs to Cline's work is rather hit-and-miss, but she gives a truly memorable performance; Ed Harris equals her in the role of husband Charlie, and together they create a synergy that has tremendous power. The supporting cast is also quite good, with Ann Wedgeworth a standout in the role of Cline's mother Hilda.And then there is that soundtrack. Even if you've heard all these songs a thousand times, they're still worth hearing again. Patsy Cline was truly an amazing artist. But the film does something odd with them: the bulk of the story is set during the 1950s, but there is not a 1950s-era Cline vocal to be heard in the entire film, everything is taken from her glory years at MCA between 1960 and 1963. And very often it seemed to me that the original scoring of Cline's songs had been replaced with new arrangements.And that, ultimately, is rather typical of the film as a whole. Just a little change here, just a little inaccuracy there, and while they all seem slight individually, they add up to a fairly significant distortion collectively. The performances make it worth watching, and they bring it in at a solid four stars. But if you're expecting anything more than the glossy legend of Patsy Cline, you won't find it here.Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer