review for Great Balls of Fire! on AllMovie

An underrated film from New York director Jim McBride that eschews the typically somber biopic mood to have infectious, cartoon-style fun with the life story of rock & roll hellcat Jerry Lee Lewis, played to perfection by Dennis Quaid as an unrepentant bad boy. Presenting Lewis as a force of nature who refuses to bend to anyone's dictums or rules, McBride and Quaid have an absolute blast, never ladling on too thick their obvious view of the rocker as a creative genius. Alec Baldwin is a delight in later scenes as Lewis' real-life cousin Jimmy Swaggart, whose path to salvation lies along a more traditional, religious route, bringing the two onetime best friends into moral conflict. Winona Ryder is effective as Lewis' teenage cousin/wife, Myra, all wide-eyed innocence and guilelessness, although her character is the film's only sour note, her naïveté a tad suspect given that the real-life Myra is the author of the book on which the film is based. The real reason to catch the film, however, is not for her story, but for its music-fueled, maniacal energy and the sheer bravado of a performance from Quaid that, like his later turn in Wyatt Earp (1994), remains one of his shamefully neglected best. Great Balls of Fire! (1989) is a sadly ignored film from a regretfully overlooked director who would soon be reduced to creating made-for-TV cable films, one of which is the little-seen but superb The Informant (1997).