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Sweet Home Alabama
(2002) Starring:
Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas
Director:
Andy Tennant
Rating: PG-13
Studio:
Touchstone Pictures
Review
Posted: 10.30.02
Spoilers:
Minor
Rating: 2.5/4
By
Harvey S. Karten.
Where would you prefer to live? If
you're from a big city, is your dream to move to the 'burbs? To
a rural town? If you're in a small town now, do you dream of
spending your years near Broadway's lights and Zabar's lox?
Ambitious young people in the rich countries of the west tend to
move from villages to larger areas for more opportunities, while
in retirement the warmer climes with fewer expenses seem to
beckon.
Andy Tennant's "Sweet Home
Alabama" centers on a youthful career woman who did indeed takes
advantages of an opportunity when she left the husband she
married after he made her pregnant, moves to the Big Apple, and
lands on magazine covers as a fashion designer ready to take on
Calvin Klein. This sentimental story that illustrates the
expression, "You can move the girl from the south but you can't
move the south from the girl" is about as original as the
aphorism, but Reese Witherspoon as the energetic yet vulnerable
character provides enough entertainment to justify the homely
clichés.
Dubbed "America's Sweetheart" by
Disney, Witherspoon performs in the role of Melanie, who has not
only wowed the fashion industry with her own show but is courted
by the New York's most eligible bachelor, Andrew (Patrick
Dempsey), who is as handsome and as bland as John F. Kennedy Jr.
In one Cinderella scene he gives her a surprise party to die
for, meeting her in a darkened Tiffany's jewelry store which
lights up to reveal a staff of sales agents ready to sell her
any diamond she chooses. Melanie knows this guy for just eight
months, and oh, he's also the son of Kate (Candice Bergen), who
is New York's mayor, and is considered a future candidate for
President.
Do we believe she'd throw over the
country's prime catch to return to the guy who once knocked her
up (the handsome and manly Josh Lucas in the role of Jake),
showed up drunk at their wedding some seven years earlier, and
now lives in a shack in Pigeon Creek, Alabama? Of course we do,
because this is a romantic comedy, which means the more two
people fight, the more likely they will get together in the very
end.
While no one in the audience
really thinks that Melanie will marry New York's most prominent
young man, predictability is not an issue. What counts is that
C. Jay Cox's narrative is well constructed and that Andy Tennant
has a feel for the two cultures. As the Civil War battle
reconstruction punctuates, Pigeon Creek, AL (filmed in Florida)
and New York, NY are two different worlds. We get a glimpse of
southern rubes, including Melanie's folks (Fred Ward and Mary
Kay Place), who turn out to be smarter and bearing more common
sense than their city-mouse opposites. The one character who
doesn't work, who is an embarrassment given that we're in the
21st Century, is Bobby Ray (Ethan Embry), the town's wide-eyed
gay, who makes eyes at a few of the men in his vicinity.
Am I encouraged by this portrayal
of southern sincerity to move out of New York? No way.
Tuscaloosa's calling, but I'm not going.
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