Posted: 09/28/2002

Sweet Home Alabama

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Witherspoon scores in another good comedy.

It was the trailer that got me. They played the Anthem of Alabama: the title of this movie. The music of Lynard Skynard has allowed millions of non-Southerners to become Rednecks in absencia. Kind of like St. Patrick’s Day makes everyone Irish for the day. I heard the song and had to see the movie. It didn’t matter that I could probably write the review before I saw the opening titles. I knew what was going to happen. The name is Sweet Home Alabama, not New York, New York. Which guy do you THINK she’s going to end up with? It was just a matter of which county back road they were going to take to get from the Speakeasy to the Still.

Sweet Home Alabama is not great drama, nor is it great comedy. It is a very nice, good clean fun movie that is worth your attention. The story (Douglas Eboch and C Jay Cox write their second movie together) is the tale of a bright young southern girl who escapes the back country of Pigeon Creek, Alabama and moves to New York city for a new beginning with a new name, and 7 years later, is a successful clothes designer. Melanie Carmichael is played by Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde, Pleasantville). So perfect. The southern accent only comes in when Melanie is stressed and forgets how hard she worked to lose it. I wondered if that happened in real life for Witherspoon, who was born in Nashville.

In what is one of the most romantic scenes in memory, the movie opens with her being proposed to by the mayor of New York’s son Andrew (Patrick Dempsey from Denial, Loverboy). She says yes but knows there is a trip home in her future to confront her boyhood love for a divorce. It seems she hasn’t been able to get him to sign the divorce papers for the entire time she has been in New York.

The first love of her life is Jake. As we go through the movie, we will see that there is a lot more to this man than meets the eye. As he says, “Just because I talk slow don’t mean I’m stupid.” Josh Lucas (Dean of Mathematics Martin Hansen from A Beautiful Mind) is incredible as Jake. And his stirring blue eyes make him easy on the eyes (that from my wife who spent much of the movie wanting more close ups of the Matthew McConaughey look-alive. In fact, if you compare Sweet Home Alabama to The Wedding Planner, the stories take a few similar turns with, of course, the same ending: guy gets girl who wanted guy in the first place.

The movie has a good cast chemistry, and story is pulled off by lots of good acting performances. The three mothers of the people involved in this love triangle are excellent: Mary Kay Place (Committed) for Melanie, Jean Smart (In-Laws and TV’s Designing Women) for Jake, and Candice Bergen (TV’s Murphy Brown, and Miss Congeniality) Andrew’s Mayor of New York mom all show some disappointment in their children while supporting them. Ethan Embry (Can’t Hardly Wait) is also good as Melanie’s childhood buddy who no one seems to know is gay but her.

It’s the attention to details in the movie that really bring it together. One of them is a sign in a bar that says “No Dancing On Tables With Spurs.” Perfect. There are lots of other things that show you exactly how great it must be to live in a small town in the south. A demonstrative scene takes place in a diner when a stranger asks the full restaurant where he can find Melanie. We get to see how protective the town folk can be when they think a “reporter” is out to get some dirt on their girl.

The only thing disappointing with this movie is the title song. Where is Sweet Home Alabama? Yea, a bar band does a decent cover of it and the closing credits have another version, but I wanted the classic song that makes me start talking with a drawl. Guess they were only willing to pay for the rights for the trailer. And I don’t mean a double wide. Like my pappy always says, “If you’re gonna take a dog into the swamp, better make sure the dang thing can swim.” Or sumpin’ like that. If you go see Sweet Home Alabama, you’ll understand.

Hank Yuloff is a writer in Los Angeles.

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