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Sweet Dreams (1985)

Sweet Dreams (1985)

5.5

A middling biopic that focuses more on a marriage rather than the country icon herself

Movie

United States of America
English
Drama, Music, Romance
1985
imdb
rt
wiki

TLDR

Patsy Cline deserved better.

What it's about

Aspiring country singer Patsy Cline is resigned to her unhappy marriage and small-town gigs, until she meets the charismatic Charlie Dick, and finds a new manager in Randy Hughes.

The take

Sweet Dreams is supposedly a film about Patsy Cline, one of the most influential country and pop vocalists of the 1960s. To the film’s credit, Jessica Lange does a great job emulating the singer, though the vocal performances come straight from the source recordings, and Ed Harris, portraying the husband Charlie Dick, shares a believable chemistry with Lange. But sadly, Sweet Dreams is much more interested in her marriage than in her artistry, more interested in the accidents she’s gone through than in the way she recovered after the crash. Rather than focus on an inspiring life story that practically writes itself– a young woman who, despite what life has given, managed to teach herself music and become one of the greatest singers of all time– Sweet Dreams is not so sweet at all.

What stands out

Charlie Dick undeniably had an impact in Patsy Cline’s life as a muse and eventual champion of her legacy, so understandably, he held a lot of runtime. But rather than focus on that, most of that runtime is dedicated to how much he was jealous of her success, which is a strange choice for a biopic supposedly celebrating her legacy.

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