Filming locations

The film was filmed on location: Marion, Arkansas, Memphis, Tennessee, and West Memphis, Arkansas.

Critical reception

Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, did not like the film because of its weak screenplay, and wrote, "This is a simpleminded rock 'n' roll history in which the pleasures are many and the troubles are few. Lewis, played by Dennis Quaid as a grinning simpleton with a crazy streak and a manic piano style, climbs the same career ladder as many of the stars of musical biographies, but he does it with lightning speed." Ebert also said that Quaid did a nice job of reproducing the Jerry Lee Lewis stage persona.[3]

Critic Caryn James thinks the film tells the fun side of rock and roll, and wrote, "Jim McBride's film is a compressed, cleaned-up version of the Jerry Lee Lewis story, but it re-creates the soul-shaking, brain-rattling fun of rock-and-roll. It also captures, perhaps for the first time on film, something of the sexual aura of rock-and-roll at its birth." Yet, she added that anyone looking for a true sense of music history will be let down by the film.[4]

Soundtrack

An original motion picture soundtrack was released by the producers on the Polydor Records label on June 8, 1989. Jerry Lee Lewis re-recorded his music from the 1950s for the soundtrack with the title track "Great Balls Of Fire," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "That Lucky Old Sun." The soundtrack contains 12 tracks.[6]

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