Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Candace Bergen, Mary Kay Place, Fred Ward.

First, the Lowdown: A NY socialite has to return to her hometown in Alabama to finalize the divorce of her estranged husband.

Melanie Carmichael has the perfect life – she lives in New York City, has successfully launched a fashion line, and is now engaged to one of the most successful men in the city (and the son of the mayor). In fact, after the proposal, Melanie’s fiancé, Andrew, wants to call her parents to give them the good news – a move which she shoots down, because she wants to give it a little time to settle in first.

However, Melanie’s real reason for wanting to keep the engagement on the downlow is that she is still married to her childhood sweetheart in Alabama. (I know! Alabama of all places!) In fact Melanie’s actual name is Melanie “Felony” Smooter. Seven years ago she fled Alabama for New York City to seek her fortune and forget her past – but after several attempts to get her divorce finalized have failed, she has returned home to make sure they do finish.

And that’s all the synopsizing I’m going to do here. You guys come to my website and say “Entertain us, funny guy! Watch the movies and do all the thinking for us so we can quote the hilarious lines you throw up on the screen at our parties and make other people laugh!” Well, as they say: under the greasepaint and blood of children lie the tears of a clown. I’ll give you your “funny” all right, but I want it known that there are times when I watch these films at a great personal and emotional sacrifice, and one day I’ll sit down to try to analyze another pre-manufactured “comedy” and the only thing you’ll get out of me at the end are simian grunts.

First off, lemme point out that it’s pretty obvious from the get go that the character of Melanie is going to dump her perfect, New York fiancé and fall back in love with the guy she left seven years ago. In fact, it seems that everyone (including said fiancé) seems to know this except her. I’m not spoiling the movie, the only way they could make it more obvious is by having a marching band parade across the camera with banners streaming “SHE GETS BACK TOGETHER WITH HER HUSBAND IN THE END!”

What angers me even more than the obvious predictability of this film is that if we had switched the genders and it was Patrick Dempsey who had abandoned a wife in some hick town in the south – he would’ve been made out to be a creep (or a serial killer.)

And what about the cause of their estrangement? There was some brief mention of getting separated because of a miscarriage or something, but then nothing else. Before I watched the movie, I was hoping that there would at least be a weepy and violent separation story – involving booze or guns or both – but then I remembered this was a Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy, which means she’s here to turn everyone’s life around, right?

Oh wait – SHE DOESN’T. Witherspoon’s character isn’t even allowed to do the ONE thing she knows how to do right. Instead it’s scene after scene of Melanie reacting to “quaint, Southern life” as put through a nostalgic filter. (Nobody here even sounds remotely Alabaman – they’re missing the southern drawl on too much novocaine twinge that the Huntsville accent brings.) The more I was exposed to the locals, the less sympathy I had for them, even if their “local color” had been whitewashed a tad to avoid offending the GOP set. Y’know, if you’re going to have the lead character hook back up with her estranged, redneck husband, at least try making the town she left a bit more attractive.

The person I had the most sympathy for, however, was Patrick Dempsey as the perfect fiancé, Andrew. In every single scene he is inwardly chanting “I need this for my career. I need this for my career.” He’s counting the seconds until he’s off camera so he can drink his pain away. In fact, in the film’s climactic scene where Melanie decides to dump Andrew for her ex- (during their wedding, no less), Dempsey looks more relieved to be finally out of the movie than anything else.

I can hardly wait for the sequel – where an embittered Reese Witherspoon has nine kids, chain-smokes Virginia Slims, and drinks long island ice teas to wash away the pain of letting the perfect man go back to New York City.

Line of the movie: “I never understood that expression, but no – I am not ‘shitting’ you.” It was the only one that made me laugh.

Two stars. There is a bottle of booze calling my name.