Guilty Pleasure – Rhinestone

• Title: Rhinestone
• IMDB: link

Looking back at Sylvester Stallone‘s long (and checkered) film career it’s hard not to argue that 1984’s Rhinestone is perhaps the most ridiculous premise the actor ever signed-on for (which you consider movies like Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Lock-Up, and The Specialist is really saying something). Stallone stars as a New York cabbie who country star Jake Farris (Dolly Parton) bets her sleazy manager (Ron Leibman) she can turn into a country star in two weeks. If she wins Freddie agrees to cancel her contract, but if she looses she is looking at five more years working for the sleazeball on stage… and in his bedroom.

A basic fish-out-of-water story, Jake takes the musically inept Nick back home to Tennessee for a two-week crash course on country music where the two bicker and, you guessed it, eventually fall for each other. Writer Phil Alden Robinson would go on to pen Field of Dreams, Sneakers, and All of Me. Rhinestone is far from his best work but director Bob Clark does have the luxury of two charming stars to help sell the uninspired premise.

Recently re-released on a barebones DVD the movie is more a “what the hell were they thinking?” curiosity than anything else, but I’ll admit to seeing the movie as a kid and still having some fondness for its ludicrous premise. The script, in true romcom fashion, is needlessly complicated by a subplot involving an ex-boyfriend and a late falling out between Jake and Nick which nearly costs her the bet.

Although the film was both a critical and box office flop, the soundtrack did earn Parton two top ten country singles for “Tennessee Homesick Blues” and “God Won’t Get You.” Certainly nothing approaching a good movie, fans of either Stallone or Parton, or simply wacky comedies that don’t quite pan out, may still get a hoot out of Rhinestone for the guilty pleasure that it is.

[Anchor Bay, $9.98]