“Sweet Home Alabama,” Reese Witherspoon’s (“Legally Blonde” and better films) newest vehicle, is a trite but pleasant yarn of the big city versus the back woods, of old friends and new and of the life you just can’t leave behind. Witherspoon stars as white-trash nobody turned on-the-rise fashion designer Melanie Carmichael, who has left her Alabama roots to make a new life and a new relationship in New York City.
Melanie thinks she has everything she wants and when boyfriend Andrew (Patrick Dempsey of “Scream 3” and better films) becomes fiancZ Andrew, Melanie couldn’t be happier…except that she’s already married in Alabama.
So back home she goes, for what she hopes is the last time, to face her friends (talented Ethan Embry and more), her parents (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place) and especially her estranged spouse Jake (Josh Lucas, “A Beautiful Mind” and other good films). But the past isn’t so easy to get rid of.
Matt’s Take:
Simple enough. In fact, the movie seems obsessed with simplicity. Director Andy Tennant smooths over plot anachronisms as efficiently as if “Alabama” was a “Home Alone” sequel. Like “Home Alone,” it makes the dad-gum thing work better.
Who cares that Embry’s character Bobby Ray (yes, that’s his name) is gay? Certainly no one in this Southern conservative white town. Well, they care for maybe five minutes. Friendship triumphs over adversity. Hooray. And Tennant moves us on.
Who cares that the tumultuous critical love scene takes place at the grave of Jack’s deceased canine? Smooching works just as well in cemeteries. Off we go. Who cares that nothing is resolved in the final scene for anyone other than the two main characters? You get a montage over the credits. OK, whatever.
Aside from turning a blind eye to difficulties, the acting is bearable to good (minus Andrew’s mayor-mom Candice Bergen, whom I’ve given up on, and Place, who wasn’t acting) and some of the Southern humor works surprisingly well-Civil War reenacting, for one, and Southern rock covers for others.
The point is, don’t forget that this is a film all about the bigger-than-dumb little-nit-picky-things picture. Granted: the big picture is still pretty silly, but it is rather fun. Problems are ignored, but I preferred it that way. It’s not where you end up; it’s how you get there, and if you laugh along the way (with it or at it-I did both) then for me it’s six bucks at least tolerably well-spent. The flick’s made 60 million bucks already; some people must agree with me.
Gabe’s Take:
Straight from the Hollywood cookie factory comes “Sweet Home Alabama,” the new Witherspoon vehicle from Touchstone Pictures and Tennant (“Anna and the King,” “Ever After.”). A confection as yummy on the outside as it is bitter on the inside, this snack of a movie may taste good on the way down, but it isn’t very filling and doesn’t make that hearty of a meal.
Not that the film is without charm, it works well enough as what it is designed to be-an easy-going, escapist fairy tale (and dyed-in-the-wool date movie fodder). Some of the backwoods tomfoolery hits the mark, and the performances are uniformly good.
Place and Ward fit snugly into their stereotypes as Melanie’s shrill mother and the crotchety father, and Embry and Jean Smart are quite good in wispy secondary roles. Dempsey cuts a dashing figure as Melanie’s New York socialite fiancZ, and Lucas is excellent as Jake, the scrappy ex-husband with a few surprises up his sleeve.
The headliner here, though, is Witherspoon, and she delivers. Talented and eminently bankable, she is one of Hollywood’s hottest commodities these days, and her success is well-deserved. Even when the movie itself is not engaging, Witherspoon is, and she makes as good a heroine as a romantic comedy of this nature is likely to get.
The script was a bit too lazy for my taste, resolving itself gaily to an endless parade of Southern-fried clichZs and sitcom-ready shenanigans. This is also a love triangle without much genuine conflict, because we, as audience members, know which beau Melanie will choose from the first time he appears on-screen. Though much of the banter is serviceable, many of the plot contrivances ring a bit too coincidental and, what is infinitely worse, familiar.
Also bothersome to this reviewer (born and bred in Louisiana and Mississippi, respectively) is the film’s hackneyed depiction of the American South. Once again we get the fantasy South of every Hollywood dream, the same mythical lost continent featured so prominently in films like 1998’s atrocious “The Waterboy.” The Alabama of this film is stocked with plantation-owning madmen, doublewides and accents you couldn’t cut with a chainsaw (but, oddly enough, not a drop of sweat in sight).
The script depends on this fantasy setting for most of what is supposed to be its charm and humor. For example, one of the movie’s lynchpin emotional scenes takes place in a darkened location called (I’m not joking) Coon Dog Cemetery. If you can accept this and run with it, then, chances are, you will enjoy this movie. If your cynicism and Southern pride kick into overdrive (as mine did throughout the film), then you’re better off sitting this one out.