GREAT BALLS OF FIRE. Directed by Jim McBride; written by Jack Baran and Jim McBride; produced by Adam Fields for Orion. Starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder. Rated PG-13.
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Great Balls of Fire dramatizes two years in the early career of Jerry Lee Lewis. It's one of those movies that's got its good points and its bad; I can't recommend it all out, but I can't just pan it, either.
If you're a fan of Lewis or of Quaid, you should see it in spite of its flaws. The renditions of Lewis' music are terrific; although they sound like originals, they're actually new versions, done by Lewis for the movie.
Quaid's performance is also remarkable, but while it will certainly interest his fans, it may not please them. The likeableness that he almost always projects, no matter how varied his roles have been, is missing here.
It's a gutsy performance, full of energy and barely suppressed violence as well as a host of odd mannerisms. All this rings true to the character, but it doesn't illuminate the man very much.
Ryder is as much the star of Great Balls of Fire as Quaid is. She plays Myra, Lewis' second cousin and third wife, who marries him when she is only 13. Myra is a more sympathetic, less bewildering character than Quaid's Lewis, but her character is by no means over-simplified.
Ryder does a wonderful job, displaying a wide range of emotions in Myra, from pre-adolescent excitement to an adult-like sensitivity. Judging from her work here and in the past couple of years, she has a long and illustrious career ahead, full of lots of interesting movies.
Alec Baldwin is another busy actor who appears in Great Balls of Fire. His scenes as another Lewis cousin, evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, are brief but impressive. The relationship between the two men is treated rather superficially, though. A deeper exploration of the conflicting pulls of Bible-belt Christianity and rock-and-roll would have been interesting.
July 19, 1989