Sweet Hearts Dance | |
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Directed by | Robert Greenwald |
Produced by | Jeffrey Lurie |
Written by | Ernest Thompson |
Starring | |
Music by | Richard Gibbs |
Cinematography | Tak Fujimoto |
Edited by | Robert Florio Janet Bartels-Vandagriff |
Distributed by | TriStar Pictures |
Release date
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September 23, 1988 |
Running time
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101 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $9 million |
Box office | $3,790,493 |
Sweet Hearts Dance is a 1988 American comedy drama film directed by Robert Greenwald. The screenplay by Ernest Thompson centers on two small town couples, one married for several years and the other at the beginning of their relationship.
The film was shot on location in Hyde Park, Vermont at Brendan Mullins' house. Mayor of Burlington, future Vermont Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders makes a cameo appearance in the film.
It's Halloween, and New England contractor Wiley Boon, married to his high school sweetheart Sandra and the father of three children, feels smothered after fifteen years of the same routine and is facing a midlife crisis. His best friend, local school board president Sam Manners, is on the verge of starting a relationship with Adie Nims, a recent transplant from Florida and the new teacher at the grade school. During Thanksgiving dinner, Wiley and Sandra have a minor disagreement that prompts him to leave his family and move into a mobile home to sort through his feelings of emotional unrest. Using subsequent holidays as a background, the film focuses on both their efforts to recapture the magic of their early years together.
Janet Maslin of the New York Times thought "the rapport between the film's four principals is so well established that its romantic quadrille about the various ups and downs of two humorously contrasting couples really does come to life." She added, "Sweet Hearts Dance . . . approaches love as a series of fits and starts. It approaches narrative in much the same way, which would be more of a problem if the film were not so enjoyably loose-jointed anyhow . . . [It] tends to drift, but it has good humor and an easygoing appeal, not to mention a thoroughly attractive cast."