Heart of Dixie is a 1989 drama film adaptation of the 1976 novel Heartbreak Hotel by Anne Rivers Siddons and directed by Martin Davidson.

Noted film critic Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote:[3] Heart of Dixie is a clear-eyed, funny and affecting movie about the emotional awakening of a pretty, white Alabama coed in 1957, on the eve of the great racial struggles that would mark the 1960s throughout the South.

... Mr. McCown's screenplay, based on the novel Heartbreak Hotel, by Anne Rivers Siddons, is refreshing in the way that it refuses to impose a long historical view on the immediate events it is recording.

Miss Madsen, who looks a little like Carole Landis as well as like Kim Novak, is also fine, as are Mr. Williams, Phoebe Cates (as Maggie's unconventional friend) and Don Michael Paul, who manages to play Maggie's Southern chauvinist fiance with a good deal of arrogant charm.In contrast, Rita Kempley, staff writer at The Washington Post panned the film, writing, "Ally Sheedy, Virginia Madsen and Phoebe Cates combine their negligible talents in Heart of Dixie -- a melodrama so full of hams, it oinks.

"[4] Ally Sheedy was nominated for Worst Actress at the Golden Raspberry Awards, but lost to Heather Locklear for The Return of Swamp Thing.