{"id":2238,"date":"2024-08-12T03:51:40","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T03:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2238"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:26:41","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:26:41","slug":"a-night-in-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/12\/a-night-in-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"A Night in Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A Night in Heaven <\/strong>(1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century Fox\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 83 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, nudity, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John G. Avildsen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Joan Tewksbury\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jan Hammer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: David L. Quayle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 18, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Christopher Atkins, Lesley Ann Warren, Robert Logan, Deborah Rush, Deney Terrio, Sandra Beall, Alix Elias, Carrie Snodgress, Amy Lyndon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $5.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0If I didn\u2019t know any better, I\u2019d swear A Night in Heaven<\/strong> is somebody\u2019s idea of a practical joke. I find it hard to believe director John G. Avildsen (Rocky, The Karate Kid) is responsible for such a badly made picture. I have a theory about it though. It looks as though the studio butchered it prior to its release without consulting Avildsen. Surely he would have asked to have his name removed upon seeing what Fox did to it. Crucial scenes are missing. Characters are introduced only to go on to play no vital role in the story. It asks big questions about love, fidelity and career ethics, but doesn\u2019t really answer them. It barely explores them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What\u2019s even more disheartening about A Night in Heaven<\/strong> is that it was written by Joan Tewksbury who also wrote the script for Robert Altman\u2019s brilliant Nashville (1975). This can\u2019t be what she had in mind, can it? Like she did with Nashville, she spent a month living in the place she wrote about (in this case, Florida). She visited male strip clubs, trying to get the color and feel. I don\u2019t know what she put down on paper, but what ended up on screen is a simple-minded sex drama in which a younger man seduces an older married woman. Before that even happens, we\u2019re subjected to one boring, confusing movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon) plays Rick Monroe, a popular college student who works nights as a male stripper named \u201cRicky the Rocket\u201d. He flunks his final after his uptight speech teacher, Faye Hanlon (Warren, Victor Victoria), objects to him cracking a joke at the end. Her marriage to Whitney (Logan, The Wilderness Family), a rocket scientist at Kennedy Space Center, is in a slump at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That night, she goes to a strip joint called Heaven (hence the title!) with her sister Patsy (Rush, Honky Tonk Freeway) visiting from Chicago. And wouldn\u2019t you know it, it\u2019s the same place where Rick\/Ricky dances. What are the odds? When he spots his teacher, he gives her one hell of lap dance, forcing her hand on his crotch and kissing her passionately. Things at home get worse after Whitney quits his job because he doesn\u2019t want to make missiles. He shuts her out emotionally which makes her vulnerable to Rick\u2019s slick moves. Eventually, they end up having sex.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are many, MANY things wrong with A Night in Heaven<\/strong>. At 83 minutes, it\u2019s a very half-assed movie. A character named Tony is introduced. He\u2019s played by Dance Fever host Deney Terrio whose name appears fifth in the opening credits. He\u2019s not in it all that much even though Tewksbury appears to be building a subplot for his character, one involving an ethical dilemma about taking a job as a stripper. It\u2019s raised but never explored. Near the end, it\u2019s shown to be resolved, but how did Tony arrive at the resolution? Rick\u2019s sister Eve (Lyndon, The Poughkeepsie Tapes) is introduced as a character, but exits the film almost immediately after she first shows up. We meet Rick\u2019s mother (Snodgress, Murphy\u2019s Law), a waitress at a coffee shop in the same hotel where he later hooks up with Faye. We only ever see his mom at her place of work except once, when she leaving the trailer home they presumably share to go to work. What is Rick\u2019s home life like? Did he have it tough growing up? Is that why he wants to succeed in life so badly? Probably. There are just so many unanswered questions in A Night in Heaven<\/strong>. How are we expected to care about the central characters when we know so little about them?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Another one of the movie\u2019s big problem has to do with how it was marketed. The ads make it sound like a Flashdance rip-off, but other than the different identities by night and day story angle and a soundtrack filled with hopeful #1 hits, the two movies aren\u2019t at all alike. The poster is especially misleading. Atkins assumes a Saturday Night Fever pose while dancing with a girl decked out in Flashdance gear. There\u2019s no such girl in the movie. Let me be clear, A Night in Heaven<\/strong> is to musicals what 1981\u2019s Tarzan the Ape Man is to jungle adventures. It\u2019s a sex film that doesn\u2019t even have all that much sex in it, just two scenes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting is pretty bad too. Atkins might be the only one in his element here, playing a character so vacuous that you wonder how much of it is actually acting. And what the hell is Warren doing here? She was nominated for an Oscar the year before. Is this really the best offer she received after that? The two actors generate zero chemistry. It\u2019s okay though because Warren and Logan aren\u2019t much better as a couple either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only good thing about A Night in Heaven<\/strong> is the soundtrack. It contains two songs- \u201cHeaven\u201d by Bryan Adams and \u201cObsession\u201d, later recorded by Animotion- that would go on to become hits two years later.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A Night in Heaven<\/strong> is, unquestionably, a bad movie, but allow me to qualify that statement. It\u2019s an amusingly bad movie, unintentionally funny. I honestly don\u2019t know how to react other than bemused. I give it one star because it\u2019s so utterly, hopelessly inept. It\u2019s very badly made, but like I theorized earlier, it\u2019s likely the fault of the studio rather than the makers. It is, however, watchable on the level of an entertainingly bad movie. If you\u2019ve never seen it and love bad movies, give it a shot. All other will likely think that A Night in Heaven<\/strong> is more like 83 minutes in Hell.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Night in Heaven (1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 83 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, nudity, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John G. Avildsen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Joan Tewksbury\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jan Hammer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: David L. Quayle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 18, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Christopher Atkins, Lesley Ann Warren, Robert Logan, Deborah Rush, Deney Terrio, Sandra Beall, Alix Elias, Carrie Snodgress, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/A-Night-in-Heaven-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3175,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions\/3175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}