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In real life, there’s not much that’s funny about falling
in love. It’s intense, inconvenient, and often, downright
painful. Maybe that’s why the lives and loves depicted in
romantic comedies seem to exist somewhere around the second
star to the right and straight on ’til morning. Only on film
can one find the sorts of folks who are so completely out
of touch with their feelings—and who, apparently, have come
to sexual maturity without ever having seen a romantic comedy—that
they can’t see what’s all too evident to everyone around them.
There’s a way to deal with this sort of patently unbelievable
material. Rent classics such as Hitchcock’s Mr.
And Mrs. Smith; Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday,
Bringing Up Baby, or Ball Of Fire; Preston Sturges’
Palm Beach Story; or even Fred and Ginger
in Shall We Dance to see how it’s done. Unfortunately
for actors, the masters of this lighter-than-air genre are
dead. Unfortunately for audiences, Hollywood didn’t get the
word, so it keeps bringing this drivel back from beyond the
grave.
Melanie Carmichael (Witherspoon) is a fashion designer
who’s about to hit it big in NYC. (Her clothes are really
atrocious, nothing like the Audrey Hepburn elegance
suggested by the movie’s poster, but that’s a whole other
review.) She’s also dating the Andrew, a nice guy (Dempsey)
who happens to look quite a bit like John F. Kennedy Jr. and
who also happens to be the mayor’s (Bergen) son. This
Andrew is also no slouch at romance, arranging up a truly
inspired setting to ask for Melanie’s hand in marriage. Like,
who could say no at Tiffany’s? One thing, though. There’s
the pesky issue of the hometown sweetheart whom she married
then abandoned in Pigeon Creek, Alabama seven years ago. Melanie
needs a D-I-V-O-R-C-E. To get it, she has to journey back
to a place and a past she’s renounced, and a spouse who’s
none too eager to sever the connection.
There can be no doubt about this story’s ending, so it’s
best to turn our attention to other aspects of Sweet Home
Alabama. Though it was filmed in Georgia and dialects
were studied, we nevertheless get a pretty interesting variety
of Southern accents. Witherspoon’s own accent is pretty inconsistent,
which is weird since she’s from Tennessee. Here’s a plot hole
so difficult to get my mind around that it stopped me dead
in my tracks, leaving me unable to progress with the rest
of the story for a while. For her profile in a prestigious
national publication, Melanie appropriates the name and family
history of the Southern aristocrats one town over from Pigeon
Creek. It’s just inconceivable, in this information age, that
she could get away with this for two minutes. Red-meat-rending
journalists, not to mention most of us, could log onto the
Internet and have the goods on her before she could turn around.
Witherspoon is usually a hoot, but here she gives way to
stereotypical Southern volatility. Plus, her character is
so irretrievably self-centered and immature that her stupid
predicament arouses no goodwill or sympathy whatsoever. She’s
so ashamed of her hometown, her trailer-dwelling parents (Place
and Ward), and her roots that she deserves neither
Andrew, a nice guy and a real class act, nor Jake (Lucas),
her soon-to-be ex. Lucas, who looks sort of like a cross between
a young Kevin Costner and Matthew McConnaughey,
wears amusement well. That’s fortunate, because he isn’t given
much more to do than stand around grinning twinkly grins and
looking good. The most memorable performances belong to Fred
Ward, as Melanie’s Confederate-re-enacting, commonsensical
dad, and a very well-trained bloodhound.
There’s also a lot of aw-shucks country folk stuff to contrast
with the sophisticated New York lifestyle Melanie has adopted.
These boilerplate scenes are tiresome, but they do set up
some marvelously deadpan moments for the great Candace Bergen.
And naturally, we get to hear “Sweet Home Alabama,” though
not the Lynyrd Skynyrd performance. Nothing about this
movie suggests that you need to see it on the big screen.
—Roxanne Bogucka
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