Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Fred Ward, Mary Kay Place, Jean Smart, Candice Bergen, Ethan Embry, Melanie Lynskey
Director: Andy Tennant
Producers: Neal Moritz, Stokely Chaffin
Screenplay: C. Jay Cox
Cinematography: Andrew Dunn
Music: George Fenton
U.S. Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
Director Andy Tennant must have a thing for romance. After spending several years toiling in television, Tennant moved into feature films in the mid-1990s. His last four movies (including this one) have all been love stories of one kind of another: the light-as-a-feather romantic comedy, Fools Rush In; the updated Cinderella story, Ever After; the Jodie Foster/Chow Yun Fat historical drama, Anna and the King, and now another romantic comedy, Sweet Home Alabama. For this movie, as with Fools Rush In, Tennant pretty much sticks to the tried-and-true. He's not interesting in breaking any new ground, nor does he make the attempt. By the end of the first reel, you pretty much know who's going to end up with whom. The only question is whether the dance that brings them together will be lively, repetitive, or inept. For Sweet Home Alabama, it falls somewhere between the first and second choices.
Reese Witherspoon, who is often the highlight of any movie she appears in, brings her chirpiness to the part of Melanie Carmichael, the Alabama fashion designed who has taken New York by storm. Not only is she the biggest thing to hit the runways, but she is engaged to the mayor's son, Andrew (Patrick Dempsey). Once Melanie and Andrew's plans to get hitched become public knowledge, Melanie decides she must return to her roots to clear up a few things. It turns out that she has a few skeletons in her closet, including parents who could optimistically be considered uncouth and a husband, Jake (Josh Lucas), who has refused to give her a divorce. Her intention in returning to Pigeon Creek is to force him into signing the papers. But things become complicated when Andrew decides to follow Melanie home.
Sweet Home Alabama does one thing a little different – it doesn't turn either of Melanie's suitors into clownish villains. To the last, both of them exude charm and warmth. Andrew is refined and Jake has an aw-shucks, country charm. Tennant and writer C. Jay Cox avoid the obvious temptation to make the former smarmy and the latter a redneck (even though he is called that on one occasion). The role of comic bad guy is left to Candice Bergen as the intolerant mayor of New York, who believes that her son marrying a girl from down South is a fate worse than him voting Republican.
Andrew's genial disposition creates problems in how we view the film. The featured couple is obviously Mel and Jake. They were child sweethearts who were fated from the beginning to be soul mates. Normally, a romantic comedy would make Andrew unlikable so we would be rooting for him to be dumped in the end. Not so here. As in the Ben Affleck/Sandra Bullock/Maura Tierney feature, Forces of Nature, we find our sympathies divided. Half of us want Mel and Andrew to have their storybook wedding and fly off to Ireland on a honeymoon. The other half hope Mel will say goodbye to Andrew, knock the mayor on her ass, and re-tie the knot with Jake. Such complications are not always in the best interests of a romantic comedy, where simple is often preferred, and character development and chemistry take precedence over narrative structure.
Reese Witherspoon can carry almost any movie on her own, and there are times here when she nearly has to. Her male co-stars pale in her presence. Patrick Dempsey, far from his days as an awkward teen leading man, has some presence, but his screen time is limited. Josh Lucas, a Matthew McConaughey clone, has his share of good ol' boy charm, but not enough to hold his own opposite Witherspoon. There's a little chemistry between them, but not enough to make us feel that we're in the presence of star-crossed lovers fated to be together. Support is provided by Bergen, Ethan Embry as one of Mel's old friends, and Mary Kay Place and Fred Ward as her parents.
Sweet Home Alabama is pleasant enough (the word "serviceable" comes to mind), although the more serious scenes (such as the one in which Mel discovers what Jake has been hiding from her) work better than the comic ones, which tend to be short on laughter and long on embarrassment. The scene in which Mel gives a reporter a tour of a Southern mansion is more awkward than funny, and this is a trend that is repeated throughout the movie. Part of the problem is that the timing is off, and even the best jokes require timing to provide humor. Die-hard fans of Witherspoon and the romantic comedy genre will probably find enough to like in this film to make it worth a trip to the theater. Everyone else would be best served by spending their hard-earned money on something else.
© 2002 James Berardinelli