A Night in Heaven
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Actor: Christopher Atkins, Deborah Rush, Deney Terrio, Lesley Ann Warren, Robert LoganDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 83 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-09
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
DVD Reviews of A Night in Heaven
DVD Review: Not as bad as its reputation
Summary: 2 Stars
"A Night in Heaven" opened in 1983 to terrible reviews and even worse box office. It was a mainstay on ten worst lists everywhere. It was dubbed "Flashdunce" after another hit movie of that year.
Really, its not that bad. Insubstantial, yes. Ill-conceived, yes. Entertaining? Quite.
Lesley Anne Warren plays Faye, a speech professor at the local community college who is having marital problems. Her husband Whitney (Robert Logan), an emotionally stunted inventor, has seemingly lost interest in her and she is becoming depressed when her sister Patsy (Deborah Rush) takes her out with friends to a local strip club. There, Faye is surprised that the club's star stripper, Ricky the Rocket (Christopher Atkins), is the same cocky student she just flunked in her class. When he sees her in the audience, Ricky does a virtual lapdance for her, and it isn't long before they have plunged into an affair.
Actually, there was probably a very good, serious film buried somewhere in writer Joan Tewkesbury's original script, which is glossily directed by Oscar-winner John G. Avildsen, who went from this fiasco to "The Karate Kid". Unfortunately, the casting of Christopher Atkins in what was obviously originally a supporting role hurts the film considerably. Cast after his breakthrough role in "The Blue Lagoon", Atkins received star billing and all of the film's pre-release publicity. But Warren and Logan are the lead characters, have most of the screen time and obviously have the main relationship in the film. This caused the film to be quite obviously heavily reedited to emphasize the Atkins character, who is a total jerk, completely amoral and unlikable, and poorly played by one of the worst actors ever to be spit out of the Hollywood system. This sinks the film faster than the "Titanic". As a result, what should have been a serious examination of a marriage at a crossroads becomes a smarmy sex-comedy/marital drama in which the disparate elements just don't fit. Note the brief 80 minute running time. This is one film which I wish could be reedited to a director's cut, so we can see what the writer and director's original intent was. Instead, we will forever be saddled with the studio's botched reedit.
In spite of all this, "A Night in Heaven" remains entertaining and easy to watch. Lesley Ann Warren gives a good performance here, although I'm sure this film isn't listed on her otherwise stellar resume. Robert Logan is also quite good, although his presence is a bit of an eye-opener considering he is best-known for family films like "The Wilderness Family" and this film comes as close to soft-core porn as any major Hollywood studio film of recent decades. Deborah Rush gives able support, and there's a decent performance here by an actress named Sandra Beall as Ricky's long-suffering girlfriend Slick. The late Carrie Snodgress also has a couple of good scenes as Ricky's mother. Unfortunately, Atkins' horrible acting just about negates the performances of everyone around him. It's impossible to do excellent work when the person you are acting with can't act to save his life. It makes you appreciate Warren's work even more. That she manages to give a good performance under the circumstances is commendable.
One note: This film contains one of the sexiest love scenes I have ever seen in a film, and is one of only three reasons to see it. The other two? Warren's performance and Bryan Adams' now-classic love them "Heaven", which plays in its entirety over the opening and closing credits. When you take away the seven minutes for these sequences, that leaves 73 minutes of story, which makes the cuts even more noticeable.
"A Night in Heaven" is one bomb from the early '80's that should have been much better, but remains more entertaining than many much better films of the era.
**1/2 (out of *****); ** for execution; *** for entertainment value.
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