Anybody who reads this column from week to week knows that its main theme is the appreciation of movies as a means of escape from the ups and downs of everyday life. What may not be known is that my favorite type of such escape is a good chick flick. Pop in \The American President,"" ""Notting Hill"" or ""Sleepless in Seattle"" and I won't leave the couch. Unfortunately, not all chick flicks are created equal, and ""Sweet Home Alabama"" demonstrates just that.
""Sweet Home Alabama"" follows the life of Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon), an up-and-coming fashion designer in New York who becomes engaged to Andrew Henning (Patrick Dempsey), the mayor's son and all around JFK Jr. society type. Before she can live happily ever after, she must confront her past in rural Alabama, which means reuniting with her parents after seven years of estrangement, and more importantly, finalizing a divorce from her husband Jake (Josh Lucas). This leaves her conflicted about what she's given up.
The basic story of ""Sweet Home Alabama"" is generic enough to begin with, being nothing more than an amalgam of many fairy tale clich??s, but everyone involved except for Witherspoon seems to do everything in their power to leave the movie a forgettable mediocrity. First and foremost is the script. When I think about my job prospects after graduation (around 2009 or so), it comforts me to know that people can get paid for cranking out such crap. Not only are believable moments in the dialogue anomalous, and not only is every American clich?? spewed ad nauseum, but for every joke that's even slightly funny, there are at least two or three that will leave you hearing crickets in the theater.
Of course, the hack director and mediocre cast must shoulder some of the blame. Andy Tennant does nothing to smooth over the holes in the script that require individual characters to sometimes change almost wholesale from one scene to the next. He also lays a pitifully generic soundtrack over the entire movie, while making genuinely strange decisions on pace and editing, which let the movie decompose into a quick-resolving, stinking pile of cheese. Of course, I long ago learned not to trust anyone once involved with both the ""Ferris Bueller"" TV show and ""It Takes Two.""
Meanwhile, the cast aside from Witherspoon is mediocre at best. With writing this bad, it's hard to divide blame between the writing and acting, especially when even Candice Bergen seems to perform as a cheap knockoff of herself in the role of Witherspoon's would-be mother-in-law. Nonetheless, what the audience is offered aside from Witherspoon is a cast fished out of the discount bin and there's no mistaking it.
In any case, I must set aside the star. I never really understood the appeal of Witherspoon before. Aside from my not being particularly enamored with her looks, I just never got the appeal of her on-screen persona and I still don't totally. Still, there is no question in watching ""Sweet Home Alabama"" that she's too good to be in such a poorly constructed movie.
And it's not that the movie doesn't have its moments. Besides, a lot of people will enjoy ""Sweet Home Alabama"" because in the end, some of us will always buy into anything sweet and theoretically romantic, and Lord knows we all try, but I just can't with something this lame. Above all, it just pains me as a New Yorker, who has spent a lot of time in the South, that such tired and obnoxious stereotypes of New Yorkers, Southerners and even dogs can still sell.
Like I said, a lot of you will enjoy this movie, but I implore you to not bother. There are such better movies in the world that offer the same sort of values and romantic overtones. Go rent one, and drop me a line if you do. I'm always down for a GOOD chick flick.
