BEFORE: Perhaps an obvious follow-up to "Sweet Dreams", since Patsy Cline also appears in this biopic as a character, having been a friend to Loretta Lynn. Linking from "Sweet Dreams", Jessica Lange was also in "Crimes of the Heart" with Sissy Spacek.
AFTER: Looking back on films of previous years, two years ago I watched "Patton" on July 4, because that seemed like the most "Ah-murr-ican" film I could find, but I think I trumped it this year. What's more American than country music? Or a story about becoming famous? For that matter, what's more American than coal mining? This film starts out deep in the bowels of the country, in the hills of Kentucky, and it just don't get any more down-home than that.
I'm at something of a loss here, because even though I know Patsy Cline's songbook backwards and forwards, I couldn't name you one song by Loretta Lynn. But I don't think that's crucial to the understanding. "Sweet Dreams" went the typical lip-synching rout, but this one had the actresses singing in the style of Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline, which is quite admirable. This made the singing scenes much more believable, but the trade-off was that the songs sounded slightly less than authentic.
Patsy Cline's plane crash is also portrayed here, since she and Lynn were touring together - but the film "Sweet Dreams" ignored their friendship, because this biopic already existed, and covered that territory.
More wife-beating tonight, much less than what was seen in "Sweet Dreams", but, really, how do you quantify that? Isn't a little still just as bad as a lot? Jeez, it's like these women needed some kind of motivation to be famous or something. Doolittle Lynn seems like a prince compared to Charlie Dick, but I suppose it's sort of a matter of degrees. And this sort of downplays Loretta Lynn's addiction to pills, but that's another common theme that's been running through this week's biopics. Still, I wonder if the true addiction in all of them isn't fame itself.
Also starring Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Lincoln"), Beverly D'Angelo (last seen in "American History X"), Levon Helm (last seen in "The Right Stuff"), Phyllis Boyens, William Sanderson, with cameos from Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl.
RATING: 5 out of 10 tour buses
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