Skynyrd meets Witherspoon

Sweet Home Alabama

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey,…

Sweet Home Alabama

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Candice Bergen and Ethan Embry

Director Andy Tennant

Melanie’s life in New York seems perfect. She has a successful fashion line, an emerging life in the public eye and a handsome boyfriend-turned-fiance after a glamorous proposal in the middle of Tiffany’s that ends with the words, “pick one.”

Of course, the life of Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) isn’t perfect. In the eight months of dating her new fiance, Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), she failed to mention her husband.

So, the very next day, Melanie treks back to the land of Southern drawls, hyphenated first names and graveyards for coon dogs, to divorce her husband Jake (Josh Lucas) and her home state of Alabama.

At times, “Sweet Home Alabama” seems predictable and unoriginal. There’s Andrew, the perfect boyfriend who has money and status, and always knows the right things to say. Then there’s the husband, Jake, rugged and rough on the outside, sensitive and soulful on the inside. No wonder Melanie can’t choose. Other characters stereotype life in the South, such as Melanie’s father, Earl (Fred Ward), who is still bitter about the Confederacy’s loss. Lurlynn (Melanie Lynskey) is Melanie’s high school friend, married with five kids, leading the life Melanie escaped from, and by the way, her baby is in the bar because it’s “still on the tit.”

But there’s something about “Sweet Home Alabama” that takes this tired plot and these typical characters and transforms them into a movie that’s actually funny and really entertaining.

Reese Witherspoon is as cute and charming as ever and has some real chemistry with the other actors, especially Josh Lucas and Ethan Embry – who plays her friend, Bobby Ray. The soundtrack is another element that works for the movie, cultivating a new appreciation for country music, although it is yet to be determined if anyone in the film actually knows more than three words to the song “Sweet Home Alabama.”

“Sweet Home Alabama” won’t rack up the Academy Award nominations, it won’t keep its audience up late pondering deep thoughts, but for a sweet romantic comedy with a good-looking cast, it’s definitely worth a look.