Product Details

• Actors: Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bob Hoskins, Lise Hilboldt
• Directors: Alan Alda
• Writers: Alan Alda
• Producers: Michael Economou, Judith Stevens, Louis A. Stroller, Martin Bregman
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Universal Studios
• VHS Release Date: March 1, 1992
• Run Time: 106 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300185516
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #335,022 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Alan Alda's follow-up to the hit comedy The Four Seasons, Sweet Liberty is an intermittently successful and lighthearted comedy that imagined what would happen if the past and present collided via Hollywood. It also provided a blueprint for David Mamet's State & Main, which took a similar premise and satirically ran amok with it. A local history professor who writes a surprise bestseller about the Revolutionary War, Alda is a man contending with a fairly mundane life until a Hollywood film crew shows up in his hometown to turn his book into a movie--one that’s filled with loads of sex and violence, unlike the scholarly tome it's based on. And the drama that's being filmed soon spills over to real-life, as Alda falls in love with the actress playing his book's heroine, and his fiancée (Lise Hilboldt) becomes enamored of the movie's leading man. Alda and Hilboldt may be the film's central couple, but it's the movie stars they're fascinated with who will catch your eye: Michael Caine, right before he embarked on his career renaissance, and a young Michelle Pfeiffer, who for the first time got to show off her beguiling comic side. As the lothario leading man with eyes for any woman who crosses his path, Caine is the kind of charming cad you can never really hate for too long. And Pfeiffer, who gets the benefit of playing both the innocent maiden of the movie-within-the-movie and her neurotic, real-life counterpart, neatly tucks the movie into her bodice and saunters off with it. --Mark Englehart

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you want to see how Hollywood REALLY treats history..., September 3, 2001

By 

Paul MacKenzie (High Point, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Liberty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie made Alan Alda the patron saint of living historians and re-enactors of the American Revolution. It shows, quite clearly, how Hollywood distorts reality and factual information to create and sell what is simply a product like any other. The humor is subtle, the give-and-take in the dialog is quick and usually very witty. The bottom line of the film is that, to Hollywood, history means entertainment and if the facts have to be changed or embellished to make what they might consider to be a more entertaining product, then so be it. If you want to learn about history, watch the History Channel. If you want to be entertained by "history", watch "The Last of the Mohicans", "Braveheart", and "The Patriot". If you want to watch an entertaining, humorous version of how Hollywood treats history, watch and enjoy "Sweet Liberty".

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars See this before you see "The Patriot", July 5, 2000

By 

Bruce Conner (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Liberty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I'm a Rev War reenactor, and this film hits the nail on the head when it comes to Hollywood vs History. In that sense it is very funny indeed, otherwise the story is a bit lame. However, having been around fanatics to whom every detail is of monumental importance as regards history, costuming etc., there are scenes in this film that make it all worth while.

If you plan to see Mel Gibson in "The Patriot", see this film first. According to my reenactor friends who worked in The Patriot, the similarities in what went on (and the final product)are remarkable!

Now repeat after me, "His hat is wrong!"

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pulling the leg of Hollywood movie making, July 18, 2001

By 

"sensodyne" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Liberty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Alan Alda plays Michael a history teacher and author of the book "Sweet Liberty" which is meant to bring American history to a broader audience. Holllywood is now making a movie based on the novel shooting on the original scene of an important battlefield of the Independance War next to Michael's home town. But Michael's material is turned into a comedy completely ignoring the historical details. He ist told that to make a movie sell at the box office you need to show three things: rebellion, destruction of property and people taking their clothes off.

Michal tries to save his novel by trying to gain the confidence of the leading lady (Michelle Pfeiffer) and the leading man (Michael Caine) by a) making love to the former and b) practicing fencing with the latter. Embeded into the subplot of Michael's family affairs the story ends in a hillarious reenacting of the historical battle including Michael and the villagers acting as extras. And they give the Hollywood people what they asked for: rebellion, destruction of property and people taking their clothes off.

This movie is a must for everybody who likes Alan Alda. Unfortunately he is not often the leading man - but here we can enjoy his acting to extend. The fencing scenes with Michael Caine are simply wonderful!