Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

HotToastyRag Written, directed, and starring Alan Alda, Sweet Liberty follows, well, Alan Alda as he gets introduced to the wacky world of Hollywood. He plays an author—which foreshadows his real-life accomplishments, since he later wrote three memoirs and became a New York Times bestseller—whose novel is being adapted into a film. Even though he has his hands full with his personal life, when he becomes surrounded by the cast and crew, he learns an entirely new definition of drama.If you like movies about making movies, you'll probably want to rent this one. The lead actors of the film within the film are Michael Caine and Michelle Pfeiffer, and it's always fun to watch beautiful people on the big screen. A ninety-two-year-old Lillian Gish plays Alan's mother, and Lois Chiles and Bob Hoskins join the supporting cast. In general, I find this genre a little too over-the-top in the backstage "drama", and even though I love Michael Caine, this movie didn't really break the mold. But there are some pretty funny scenes, and if you don't take it too seriously, it can be fun with a bunch of your friends and a bowl of popcorn.

MBunge 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.

John First of all, let me say that Michael Caine is pure genius in this film. His portrayal of a screen-idol that "makes the girls wet their pants" is perfect!Michelle Pfeiffer's part is a bit 2-dimensional, but she does have her moments. Even Alan Alda is surprisingly good (gee, I had never realized before that he could act!).Anyway, the film is very light-hearted and easy on the mind. Some good laughs, some nice scenes, etc. I'd recommend renting this, making a nice disgustingly buttered tub of popcorn, a nice big glass of sugared soda ... sit back and enjoy!

£ynette 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.