dancing at the harvest moon movie review

Dancing at the Harvest Moon

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Jacqueline Bisset (Maggie Webber) Eric Mabius (John Flemming) Susan Anspach (Julia) Nan Martin (Harriet Finnigan) Eugene Roche (Gil Finnigan) Nick Mancuso (Tom Webber) Carmen Argenziano (Paul Stanton) Bonnie Root (Diane Webber) Brian Leckner (Goalie) Valerie Harper (Claire)

A betrayed wife (Jacqueline Bisset), whose husband leaves her after 25 years, returns to the lake where she first fell in love and begins an affair with the son (Eric Mabius) of her first love.

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Dancing at the Harvest Moon Reviews

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A betrayed wife (Jacqueline Bisset), whose husband leaves her after 25 years, returns to the lake where she first fell in love and begins an affair with the son (Eric Mabius) of her first love. Based on the novel by K.C. McKinnon. Claire: Valerie Harper. Julia: Susan Anspach. Harriet: Nan Martin. Gil: Eugene Roche. Tom: Nick Mancuso.

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Produced by, dancing at the harvest moon (2002), directed by bobby roth.

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Dancing at the Harvest Moon

2002, Romance/Drama, 1h 36m

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Dancing at the harvest moon   photos.

After her marriage abruptly ends, a woman (Jacqueline Bisset) returns to a summer retreat and falls for the son (Eric Mabius) of her first love.

Rating: TV-PG (L)

Genre: Romance, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Bobby Roth

Producer: Salli Newman

Writer: Peter Nelson

Runtime: 1h 36m

Production Co: Bayonne Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television, McFarlane Productions

Cast & Crew

Jacqueline Bisset

Maggie Webber

Valerie Harper

Eric Mabius

John Keats Fleming

Susan Anspach

Eugene Roche

Gil Finnigan

Nick Mancuso

Carmen Argenziano

Paul Stanton

Bonnie Root

Diane Webber

Brian Leckner

Cari Shayne

Rob Nilsson

Dean Jim Rogers

Shannon Day

Gina Gallego

Josh Holland

Young Patrick

Kristen Kerr

Young Maggie

Peter Nelson

Screenwriter

Salli Newman

Executive Producer

Eric van Haren Noman

Cinematographer

Margaret Guinee

Film Editing

Christopher Franke

Original Music

Stephen Storer

Production Design

Robin Peyton

Set Decoration

Costume Design

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Dancing at the harvest moon.

2002 Directed by Bobby Roth

A betrayed wife, whose husband leaves her after 25 years, returns to the lake where she first fell in love and begins an affair with the son of her first love.

Jacqueline Bisset Eric Mabius Susan Anspach Nan Martin Eugene Roche Nick Mancuso Carmen Argenziano Bonnie Root Brian Leckner Valerie Harper Navi Rawat

Director Director

Assistant directors asst. directors.

Richard Peter Schroer J.J. Linsalata Amy B. Hughes

Producers Producers

Salli Newman Lawrence E. Neiman

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Writers writers.

Peter Nelson K.C. McKinnon

Editor Editor

Margaret Guinee

Cinematography Cinematography

Eric Van Haren Noman

Production Design Production Design

Stephen Storer

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Robin Peyton Lizzi Wilson

Composer Composer

Christopher Franke

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Edward Ternes Patricia Androff

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Tina Sims Johnny Ciccone Brandon Waggoner

Bayonne Entertainment McFarlane Production and Design Sony Pictures Television International

Releases by Date

20 oct 2002, releases by country.

84 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by e🌸

now I know what professors actually do on sabbatical: restore old dance halls 

can’t really argue with casting agents continually casting jacqueline as a milf & then top it off making her an english literature professor reading poetry like okay y’all

Review by 𓆩 𝓋𝒾𝓉𝒶 𓆪 ★½

sometimes all you need to get through the day is a terrible cheesy movie with a hot actress in it

Review by eb36706 ★ 2

The most implausible part of this movie is not that Jacqueline Bisset would fall in love with the son of her dead first love while rehabilitating a dance hall (?), but that said son would be Tim from The L-Word. (Sorry, Eric Mabius, I'm sure you're perfectly nice and would prefer not to be identified as Tim for the rest of your career, but, well...)

Always nice to see Valerie Harper, though!

Review by The warriors from Coney Island ★½

It is a pitty that such a good actress and beautiful woman like J. Bisset appears in this kind of films.I watched it with my wife. An easy evening.

Review by Suzy Dragnet ★

Valerie Harper plays the friend! Extra 1/2 star.  The other half star is for restoring an old building. 

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• Dancing at the Harvest Moon

• Cast & crew

Dancing at the Harvest Moon (2002)

Genre: drama / romance, duration: 84 minuten, country: united states, directed by: bobby roth, stars: jacqueline bisset , nick mancuso and valerie harper, imdb score: 5,5  (406), releasedate: 20 october 2002.

This movie is not available on US streaming services.

This movie is not available on UK streaming services.

Dancing at the Harvest Moon plot

Maggie is a professor of English literature. When she celebrates her 25th wedding anniversary, she discovers that her husband Tom is having an extramarital affair. Maggie flees to Little Bear Lake, where she met her first love in her teens: Patrick Fleming. She actually dreams of rekindling that love from back then, but Patrick Fleming has died in the meantime. And The Harvest Moon, the bar where Maggie worked as a waitress, is closed. Maggie decides to buy The Harvest Moon and rebuild it. When Patrick's son John Fleming offers her his services, Maggie falls in love with him.

Actors and actresses

Maggie Webber

John Keats Fleming

Harriet Finnigan

Gil Finnigan

Paul Stanton

Diane Webber

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Dancing at the Harvest Moon

Film details, brief synopsis, cast & crew, rob nilsson, nick mancuso, gina gallego, eugene roche, kristen kerr, technical specs.

Maggie, a woman in the midst of a life crisis returns to the lake where she spent romantic summers as a teen and falls into a passionate affair with the son of her first love. When Maggie's husband abruptly leaves her after 20 years of marriage, she struggles to find a way to overcome the loss and move on with her life. Remembering the blissful summers at a lake resort nearly 30 years earlier, Maggie returns to the romantic spot of her first love to recapture the spirit and happiness of those carefree days. As she heads to the lake, Maggie daydreams of finding her old love and rekindling their romance, but upon arriving she quickly discovers he has passed away and the lovely dance hall where they spent their summer evenings has closed and is in a state of disrepair. Maggie decides to purchase the dance hall and restore it in time to have the ball to celebrate the annual harvest moon as a tribute to the fond memories of her idyllic romantic summers at the lake. As Maggie and her friend, Claire, are figuring out a way to rebuild the dance hall, Maggie meets John, the charming son of her first love. She accepts John's offer to help reconstruct the hall and when he and Maggie develop intense feelings for each other, she must decide if her passion is for John or the lingering memory of his father.

Shannon Day

Lansing l smith, bonnie root, cathy lee crosby, eric mabius.

Susan Anspach

Valerie harper, cari shayne, josh holland, brian leckner, carmen argenziano.

Jacqueline Bisset

Michael ambrose, patricia androff, jeme benadon, david b cohn, sharon iris crall, lindsay crosby, daniel dayton, carlos delarios, carmen delgado, linda demeduk, susan demskey-horiuchi, david diano, christopher franke, jacob goldstein, eyal gordin, margaret guinee, george halstead, karen hartjen, terry haskell, george jackson, jeri kelley, j j linsalata, doug mchenry, k c mckinnon, lawrence e neiman, peter nelson, salli newman, jeffrey g olan, lori openden, lisa jane persky, robin peyton, brian robinson, richard peter schroer, michael l schwake, pamela springsteen, robert steinhauer, stephen storer, edward ternes, daniel turk, eric van haren noman, brandon waggoner, john m walker, sherry whitfield, dianne young, miscellaneous notes.

Aired in United States October 20, 2002

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• IMDb 5.5 406
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Watch Dancing at the Harvest Moon

• 1 hr 28 min
• 5.5   (401)

In the movie Dancing at the Harvest Moon, Jacqueline Bisset stars as Maggie Webber, a recently single, middle-aged woman looking to find her place in the world. She decides to attend her high school reunion, where she reunites with her old flame, Brian (played by Eric Mabius), a successful businessman who is unhappy in his marriage.

Maggie and Brian's rekindled romance gets complicated when they attend a weekend retreat together at a winery owned by Maggie's friend Bea (Susan Anspach). While there, they explore their feelings for each other and contemplate the possibility of starting a new life together.

The movie touches on themes of love, loss, and self-discovery. Both Maggie and Brian are unhappy with their current lives and find comfort in each other's company. As they spend more time together, they realize that their connection may go deeper than just a high school romance.

The beautiful vineyards and countryside surrounding the winery act as a backdrop for their budding romance. There are also scenes of group wine tastings and dinners, highlighting the importance of community and coming together over a shared love of food and drink.

Throughout the movie, Bisset delivers a powerful performance as a woman grappling with the end of a marriage and the uncertainty of starting a new chapter in her life. Mabius also shines as a man trapped in a loveless marriage who starts to question his own choices.

Anspach adds a touch of humor and warmth to the movie as the eccentric owner of the winery, whose own romantic history serves as a cautionary tale for Maggie and Brian.

The movie, directed by Bobby Roth and based on the novel of the same name by K.C. McKinnon, is a heartfelt and romantic story that will resonate with anyone who has ever questioned their own happiness and purpose in life. It's a reminder that it's never too late to take a chance on love and start over.

Overall, Dancing at the Harvest Moon is a charming and well-acted movie that will leave audiences with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Dancing at the Harvest Moon is a 2002 drama with a runtime of 1 hour and 28 minutes. It has received moderate reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 5.5.

• Genres Drama Romance TV Movie
• Cast Jacqueline Bisset Eric Mabius Susan Anspach
• Director Bobby Roth
• Release Date 2002
• MPAA Rating TV-PG
• Runtime 1 hr 28 min
• Language English
• IMDB Rating 5.5   (401)

Dancing at the Harvest Moon 2002

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‘Opening Night’ Review: A Stylish Movie Becomes a Sludgy Travesty

Ivo van Hove’s stage adaptation of the 1977 John Cassavetes film, with music by Rufus Wainwright, turns a taut character study into a corny melodrama.

By Houman Barekat

The critic Houman Barekat saw “Opening Night” in London.

In a London auditorium, a work of art is being desecrated. “Opening Night,” John Cassavetes’s understatedly stylish 1977 movie about an actress struggling with midlife ennui, has been reimagined as a musical by the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, and the result is a travesty.

Its antiheroine, the Broadway superstar Myrtle Gordon (Sheridan Smith), has landed the lead role in a play about a middle-aged woman. But she isn’t feeling it: Though she is about 40, she insists she can’t relate. She stumbles through rehearsals, clashing with the director, Manny (Hadley Fraser), and the playwright, Sarah (Nicola Hughes), then goes rogue during previews, taking liberties with the script.

To compound matters, the actress develops a neurotic fixation on Nancy (Shira Haas), a 17-year-old fan killed in a car crash moments after getting Myrtle’s autograph. Convinced that Nancy is a cipher for her own lost youth, Myrtle intermittently hallucinates the dead girl’s ghost, and even converses with it. Myrtle is unraveling, but the show — somehow — must go on.

It’s a compelling story line, filled with dramatic possibilities, but “Opening Night,” which runs at the Gielgud Theater through July 27, is scuppered by a series of poor choices. Smith is miscast as Myrtle, for a start: Her onstage bearing exudes a homely approachability rather than high-strung poise or inscrutable aloofness.

Benjamin Walker is wooden as Maurice, Myrtle’s stage co-star and ex-partner, who Cassavetes himself played charmingly in the film. The estranged couple’s brittle onstage chemistry is an essential ingredient in the drama; here, they seem like actual strangers. Haas’s spectral Nancy is a disconcertingly cutesy symbol of youthful feminine vitality, a sprite-like figure who scurries around the stage in a short skirt, knee-high socks and platform boots — suggesting not so much a young woman as a pubescent child.

The songs, by Rufus Wainwright, are algorithmically bland. Several address aging, including the unsubtly titled “A Change of Life” (about menopause) and “Makes One Wonder,” a duet in which Myrtle and Sarah realize that, as women of a certain age, they may have more in common than they’d like to admit.

Others are about showbiz: “Magic” is an upbeat cabaret-style number about the wonder of the stage; “Moths to a Flame” is a somber, sentimental paean to the indefatigability of thespians everywhere. There is a brief foray into rock opera during an excruciating scene in which Myrtle, having figured out she must banish Nancy’s specter to get herself back on track, scuffles with the girl-child amid flashing strobe lights and 1980s-style power riffs. It’s so schlocky that it almost feels like a sendup.

Jan Versweyveld’s set is a theater within a theater. The rehearsal space occupies the foreground, and a row of vanity mirrors at the rear of the stage represents the backstage area. As in van Hove’s 2019 adaptation of “All About Eve ” — another story about the emotional travails of an aging actress — camera operators stalk its perimeter, transmitting close-up, real-time footage of the actors onto a big screen above the stage.

The idea is to ramp up the psychodrama by bringing us up close and personal, but there isn’t much intensity to intensify. The multiple angles add little to the experience. (The occasional bird’s-eye view is particularly unnecessary, unless you happen to have an interest in the topography of hairlines.) A screen caption at the start of the show informs us that a documentary film crew is recording the company’s rehearsals — a plot device that is supposed to make this camerawork feel less like a gratuitous gimmick, but so flimsily transparent that it has the opposite effect.

There are one or two good moments, including a tense rehearsal scene in which Myrtle objects to having to endure an onstage slap. She says it’s humiliating, but Manny insists it’s artistically necessary. Smith renders the standoff with a bleak comic pathos: At one point she even slaps herself to forestall the blow. (For van Hove, who is known for pushing his performers to the limit, this material is close to home.) Near the end, as the characters make their final preparations for opening night, the big screen cuts to recorded footage of theatergoers passing through the Gielgud foyer a couple of hours earlier — a clever touch that spurred a ripple of amused murmurs from the audience. But these are slim pickings.

As an artist yearning to take back control of her narrative, Myrtle should resonate at a time when questions of agency — for women and minorities, among others — are on many people’s minds. But van Hove’s corny treatment trivializes her suffering. Cassavetes’s movie had an elliptical quality that drew viewers in through the strength of its narrative artifice and the power of the actors’ performances; here, the story never comes to life, and the themes are labored. Van Hove has transformed a taut, subtly observed character study into a sludgy melodrama.

Opening Night Through July 27 at the Gielgud Theater in London; openingnightmusical.com .