MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Sweet Hearts’ Fetching but Trips on Small-Town Ambiance

In small American towns, there’s often a sense of extended family. That’s what “Sweet Hearts Dance” (citywide) is about: tensions in a Vermont town among people who’ve known each other a lifetime and are now tearing at the seams. Scenarist Ernest Thompson (“On Golden Pond”) conceives this alternately fetching and annoying story in a set of seasonable tableaux: from fall to winter with the major holidays--Halloween to Valentine’s Day--as stopping points and rock ‘n’ roll complementing the Norman Rockwell images.

The movie is about two lifelong buddies, Wiley Boon (Don Johnson) and Sam Manners (Jeff Daniels), now in their late 30s, whose destinies crisscross. Wily contractor Boon, grown tired of his family life with wife Sandra (Susan Sarandon), is desperate to break loose. Shy, mannerly bachelor school principal Sam has fallen for liberated teacher Adie Nims (Elizabeth Perkins), the one newcomer, and is cautiously courting her.

Wiley, the obvious villain, alienates everybody, including Justin Henry as his surly son. But Thompson never really conveys what broke up the marriage, why the couple stopped sleeping with each other--or, actually, why they should.

Thompson is a writer, like Neil Simon, who can be done in by his own cuteness. Thompson slicks up the common man, turns his provincial people into glib jokesters--and though he can convey honest pain or human bonds, he also seems incapable of resisting lewd innuendoes or wisecracks: the “Let’s suck face” zinger in “On Golden Pond,” or Elizabeth Perkins’ line here about feeling like a bus and waiting for her men to hop aboard. It’s as if he wanted to show that America’s Johnny Carsons come from the heartland--by creating a heartland filled with Johnny Carsons and Lily Tomlins.

The story is full of weird anachronisms. How can Daniels, as a school principal, and Perkins, as an elementary schoolteacher, carry on this bus-hopping relationship without causing a town scandal? Why is Wiley constructing a school gym in the winter, to have it ready for a Valentine’s Day dance--instead of in the summer, to have it ready for the basketball season? And what about this movie’s version of a small-town holiday spree: a pricey Caribbean holiday for the local boosters?

Thompson’s four lead characters are archetypes: the aging jock Peter Pan (Johnson), the shy, sensitive, aware male (Daniels), the resolute but warmly maternal wife (Sarandon) and the liberated woman who takes no guff (Perkins). Unfortunately, if Johnson comes across as Peter Pan and Sarandon as a misplaced Wendy, Perkins often comes across as Captain Hook--with Daniels as Smee. Adie’s comments are so nasty and prickly, her attitude so condescending, her philosophy so self-centered, that this always vibrant actress gets you miffed with her. Why should Wiley be attacked for his selfishness and Adie affectionately tolerated for hers? Thompson may have missed a bet in not developing sexual tension or even an affair between these two, because that’s where a crucial conflict lies.

Director Robert Greenwald has ranged from the top-heavy schmaltz of “Xanadu” to the social commentary of “The Burning Bed.” Here he seems to be uneasily combining the two. But the four lead actors are all very fine, especially Susan Sarandon, who’s become one of the American movies’ exemplars of mature female sexuality. There’s one scene at a local dance where she and Don Johnson stage a little entrechat of hesitant openings and missed connections; they do it so perfectly they make you smile with delight.

“Sweet Hearts Dance” (MPAA-rated R, for language and nudity) tries something valuable. Greenwald and Thompson want to portray the texture of modern American provincial life, show the frazzled bonds of male camaraderie and modern marriage. But even though small towns have been invaded with urban sophistication--through TV and the movies--they’re still small towns. Why not get them right? And, by the way, if the school isn’t consolidated--where did the basketball team play its season? In the Boon’s abandoned bedroom?

‘SWEET HEARTS DANCE’

A Tri-Star release. Producer Jeffrey Lurie. Director Robert Greenwald. Script Ernest Thompson. Camera Tak Fujimoto. Production design James Allen. Editor Robert Florio. Music Richard Gibbs. With Don Johnson, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Daniels, Elizabeth Perkins, Kate Reid, Justin Henry.

Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).