Sweet Home Alabama Review
By: T.J. “you can’t ride two horses with one ass, sugarbean” Mulligan
Almost everyone has heard the old cliche “you can’t go home again.” It remains such a popular saying because, in many ways, it is very true. Sure, given the right means and the determination to actually do so anyone can visit the places in which they grew up, see the sights that shaped them into the person they are now. The problem is that, after a certain points, those sights begin to look a little different. Places that used to inspire awe and imagination in a person’s mind as a child may look completely different when looking on that same sight, 20, 10, even 5 years later. We grow up and our outlooks shift, that is simply the way of life for most. Andy Tennant’s 2002 picture Sweet Home Alabama runs thanks to this cliche but questions whether returning to the location of a persons youth will make them see how different they have become, or remember what they loved about the place to begin with.
Sweet Home Alabama is the story of Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon), a burgeoning success in the fashion design world of New York City and fiance to the mayors wealthy and handsome son Andrew (Patrick Dempsey). One night Andrew takes it upon himself to propose to Melanie, renting out an entire jewelry store and allowing her to pick her perfect ring. Melanie is hesitant to inform others about their engagement but the news is outed by Andrew’s shrewish Mayoral mother, Kate (Candice Bergen). Telling Andrew she is going to see her family and share the news with them herself before bringing Andrew down, Melanie heads to Alabama. She encounters her family but also has an alternative agenda for her trip: securing a divorce from her estranged husband, Jake (Josh Lucas), that she has been trying to get for seven years. Jake continually refuses to sign the papers, forcing Melanie to remain in her Alabama hometown for longer than she had hoped. However, while there, she begins to reconnect with her roots, discovering who she used to be and why she fell in love with Jake in the first place.
I’m not a huge fan of many big studio romantic comedies as most seem to just phone in the majority of the work, relying on the star power and easy-to-follow formula to sell tickets. However, I definitely see the appeal and can be found from time to time shutting down my mind and simply enjoying a romantic comedy for the entertainment of it all (and I may be a slight hopeless romantic myself). But there is a reason I mainly steer clear of this type of film and Sweet Home Alabama is an excellent example of why: I despise the characters.
The audience is supposed to pull for Melanie the whole way, maybe not liking some of her actions throughout, but in the end hoping and wishing that things just work out for her. I never once felt that way. Don’t get me wrong, this is of no fault to Witherspoon who I think is a really fine actress with talent to spare, but it is all in the writing. Melanie is a character who grows up in this town where she obviously has plenty of friends, loving (if slightly off) family and a husband. For one reason or another that is not good enough for her and she jets off to New York. Alright, I’m still with you. She does this without securing a divorce from her husband that, while not good, still isn’t exactly awful. In seven years she makes repeated attempts to finalize the divorce, but obviously doesn’t press the issue too much because it doesn’t get done. Then, while in New York, she falls for someone else WHILE SHE IS STILL MARRIED. I don’t care how you slice it, that is adultery. Only when she is proposed to by this new man, a wedding eminent in the future, does she turn around and head back to Alabama to serve the papers in person. Then she gets there and proceeds to alienate the people that have welcomed her back after seven years with open arms, degrade the town and area that made her who she is, and fall back in love with her soon-to-be ex-husband while still engaged to another man who has no idea this is even going on. I had a half hour discussion after watching this movie with a friend who loves the movie and even she couldn’t rightly defend her actions. I could go on for a long while about this because this is only ONE of the characters who has enough flaws to be detestable in this film.
The acting was fine, the direction good for a film like this, and the overall production of it gave the film an inviting look and feel, but these are some awful characters. In a film about love, I found myself having none for characters and believing that few of them actually deserved to find it themselves (except the dog from the poster, that little guy was great).
I give Sweet Home Alabama 2 Coon Dog Cemeteries out of 5.
