Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
Directed by Andy Tennant
New York fashion designer Melanie Carmichael suddenly finds herself engaged to the city's most eligible bachelor. But her past holds many secrets—including Jake, the redneck husband she married in high school, who refuses to divorce her. Bound and determined to end their contentious relationship once and for all, Melanie sneaks back home to Alabama to confront her past.
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And in Andy Tennant's Hepburn homage (The Philadelphia Story meets Breakfast at Tiffany's), her spin as Melanie Carmichael (nee Smooter), a Deep South scruff turned Fashion Week design darling (godawful wardrobe notwithstanding), lacks both Kate's sly ambivalence and Audrey's sad grace.
And in Andy Tennant's Hepburn homage (The Philadelphia Story meets Breakfast at Tiffany's), her spin as Melanie Carmichael (nee Smooter), a Deep South scruff turned Fashion Week design darling (godawful wardrobe notwithstanding), lacks both Kate's sly ambivalence and Audrey's sad grace.
Obviously, there's not much there with which to fashion a film, so screenwriter C. Jay Cox (making his debut) and director Andy Tennant ("Anna and the King," "Ever After") have essentially just taken the 1991 picture "Doc Hollywood," changed a few parameters, complications and characters, and called it their own.
And so she leaves not just Jake, her teenaged husband, but her parents (Mary Kay Place and Fred Ward), her friends (including Ethan Embry and—she's back!Heavenly Creatures' Melanie Lynskey), and all of her acquaintances in Pigeon Creek, Alabama, without a word.
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The action takes place in a town with one (closeted) gay man and no blacks, where everyone talks like they're auditioning for a low budget Gone with the Wind and ATMs are unknown.
My Best Friend's Wedding was one of recent years' most rousing marital comedies, partly because it had enough flesh under its nails that it wasn't precisely a romantic comedy, and so you can't fault Sweet Home's creators in their choice of template.
A tribute to tired cliches, the latest festival of formula from Andy ("It Takes Two") Tennant provides Reese Witherspoon with the least intriguing role of her career.
It’s been said that Reese Witherspoon’s choice of film scripts is often below her caliber of actress, so it’s no surprise that her headlong jump into romantic comedy, Andy Tennant’s Sweet Home Alabama, doesn’t live up to classic (Annie Hall) or modern (Sleepless In Seattle) date movie standards.
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Josh Lucas ("A Beautiful Mind," "Session 9") and Patrick Dempsey ("The Emperor's Club," "Scream 3") appear as the two men in Melanie's life.
The film reunites Witherspoon with her American Psycho costar Lucas , who more recently appeared in A Beautiful Mind .
He is played by Josh Lucas ("A Beautiful Mind").
So she high-tails it down south to get a quickie divorce but, wouldn’t you know it, she starts rediscovering her good ol’ Southern roots and with them, an attraction to her husband (Josh Lucas – last seen as one of Russell Crowe’s college friends in A Beautiful Mind ).
The one thing the film has going for it is the presence of the bubbly, charming and magnetic Reese Witherspoon ("Legally Blonde," "Election").
Witherspoon has proven herself a gifted comic actress in Election and last year�s Legally Blonde , but her performance and charm here are largely diminished by the tedium of the material.
Over the last few years, thanks to a string of solid films like Freeway, Election, and Pleasantville, it�s become almost universally accepted that she�s an immensely talented comedienne, but it�s that knowledge of her potential that keeps you from ever being able to really enjoy her latest movie, Sweet Home Alabama.
She showed wickedness in Election and good-hearted determination in Legally Blonde.
"Sweet Home Alabama" certainly could be more romantic or stuffed with more laughs, and anyone who's seen Witherspoon in the scathing high-school satire "Election" knows she's capable of far greater performances than this.