Feature
Review | Sweet Home Alabama
Written by: Brian
Orndorf
Rated: 1/10
I liken the experience of watching “Sweet Home Alabama” to
serving a short prison sentence. A genuinely unpleasant comedy about
accepting your roots, “Alabama” doesn’t have one original
thought in its head. It’s a film stuck on auto-pilot, and proceeds
to crash as soon as it takes off.
Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon), is a successful fashion
designer living in New York. Engaged to the Mayor’s (Candice Bergen)
son (Patrick Dempsey, “Can‘t Buy Me Love“), Melanie must take
care of one little detail before she takes the plunge: the divorce
from her stubborn childhood sweetheart, Jake (Josh Lucas, “A
Beautiful Mind“), who resides deep in the heart of Alabama,
Melanie’s former home state as well. Forced to confront all the
people and history she so willingly left behind, Melanie must make a
choice between the life she has worked so hard to achieve and the life
she finds herself fitting warmly back into.
Hey, I like formula. I’ve even been known to love it. We’re
best friends, formula and me. But “Sweet Home Alabama” is formula
without a shape. It’s such an empty exercise in lethargic, audience
pleasing mass-market filmmaking, that I’m downright mystified as to
why director Andy Tennant (“Ever After”) even bothered to take a
director’s credit. Anybody could’ve made this film. Without a
better director’s authoritative thumbprint on the proceedings,
“Sweet Home Alabama” lurches along as if on a guide rail, without
one earned emotion or genuine surprise for the entire 100 minute
running time. One need only to look at the summer sleeper “My Big
Fat Greek Wedding” to see a traditional story done with enthusiasm
and clever writing. “Alabama” merely appears desperate to survive
itself.
And what to make of the cultural differences within the movie?
Tennant attempts to eke as much mileage out of the north vs. south
jokes as he can. Consider this: the southern woman who fancies herself
cosmopolitan because she used the word “multitasking” that she
heard on Oprah? Mildly insulting, and I won’t even go into the
slight humiliation the homosexual characters must endure. Even if
you’re lucky enough to be able to swallow the dreadful jokes,
Tennant has his characters constantly screaming at each other, which
makes “Alabama” less of a romantic comedy, and more of a night
with mom and dad. “Alabama” purports to be a comedy, but it’s
darker than you might expect, and less funny than it looks.
Coming off her smash “Legally Blonde,” Reese Witherspoon takes
a little bit of a creative dive here with “Sweet Home Alabama.” A
limited actress, Witherspoon doesn’t have the candy-coating to work
with that she did in “Blonde.” This leaves her out-acted by a more
game supporting cast (including the lovable Melanie Lynskey, a New
Zealander who pulls off Dixie better than the Southern-born
Witherspoon), and buried by the already abysmal screenplay.
Witherspoon isn’t miscast here, just unable to carry a picture
without a ton of help from behind the camera. And Tennant is the exact
opposite of help.
I swear to any higher power around that I’m not a wet blanket
when it comes to “Sweet Home Alabama.” I can fall for formulaic
romantic comedies as quickly as the next person, but not when
they’re done this flatly and without one ounce of effort. If you go
see this film, I expect you’ll tune out as quickly as I did.
COMMENTS
Date/Time of Posting: Oct 07 2002 /
16:24:39
IP Address: 205.188.209.176
name = alycia peluse
Email = oooStarcraftooo@hotmail.com
comments = Her home country boy who she ends up with is my kind of
man. His eyes are deep as the ocean. I believe the one you know the
best is the soul mate
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