Rating: 
Summary: You Can't Miss Sweet Home Alabama!
Review: OK, we all know that with a love-triangle like this one, it's pretty predictable who will turn out with who in the end. But the characters, storyline, and a couple of twists make up for a great movie.
Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon) is a New York City fashion designer who followed her dreams to success from a single-wide in Greenville, Alabama. While she's busy designing clothes for runway models, she leaves behind her husband, Jake (Josh Lucas) in Alabama, whom she hasn't seen or talked to in seven years. She does, however, meet the rich and somewhat mushy Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), the son of New York City's mayor (Candice Bergen), whom she falls in love with.
The engagement is a great part of the movie. Andrew sneaks Melanie, who is unsuspecting and doesn't know a thing about what's going on, through several dark hallways and surprise! - right into Tiffany's, where he asks her to marry him with all the lit glasses of jewelry in front of her to choose her engagement ring from. She accepts, but insists that she must go to Alabama by herself to make peace with her family and tell them the news.
Melanie and Jake argue and fight as soon as she pulls her sleek new car beside his old rusty truck at the home they used to share and that he now solely occupies (along with a bloodhound dog). She also visits her parents Earl and Pearl Smooter - down-to-earth, practical folks (Melanie's real last name is Smooter, but she changed it to Carmichael when she moved to New York City. Actually, the name Carmichael turns out to belong to a prominent wealthy family who owned an antebellum house in Melanie's hometown). Turns out that Pearl Smooter just wanted her daughter (and only child) to get out and "do something with her life" and not marry her highschool sweetheart dropout and live in a trailer. Melanie, however, near the end of the movie, realises that that's what she wants, that's who she is, and she's not ashamed of it. This makes for some pretty humorous situations in the movie, such as her father's Civil War reenactment (when both suitors, not knowing that they're in love with the same girl, meet each other...), her and Andrew's wedding, Melanie knocking Andrew's mother out ("The South has risen again!" whoops Earl Smooter), etc. See the movie and discover that Sweet Home Alabama is actually a good, down-home, "be who you are and not someone else" kind of movie. Definitely one of my favorites. Enjoy!-AG
Rating:
Summary: A Cute and Enjoyable Romantic Comedy
Review: Though this movie is by no means Oscar-worthy, it is an adorable romantic comedy with better acting and chemistry between the two main characters than most movies of this genre. In other reviews, people complained that Reese Witherspoon's character, Melanie, was selfish and unlikable but I think the fact that she's not perfect--i.e., a real person--makes the movie better. I also liked that Melanie's fiance, played by Patrick Dempsey, was consistently a good guy throughout the movie, even though she ultimately chooses her husband (played by Josh Lucas). The writers could have taken the easy way out and made her fiance turn into a jerk, thus making Melanie's choice between the two men a no-brainer. But, again, the movie shows realism in portraying life as full of hard, complex decisions. Reese Witherspoon is very good as a girl who is initially embarrassed by her roots, but ends up being proud of who she is. Josh Lucas is great as her stubborn but charming and sweet Southern husband. And, the ending is predictable, but what do you expect? It's a romantic comedy; you'd be disappointed if it wasn't what you predicted, and fortunately, this movie didn't disappoint.
Rating: 
Summary: Cute
Review: I liked the movie. Yes, it's too fluffy, and Too predicable but I enjoyed it anyway. If you can get pass all of this, I bet you will have a grand old time.
Rating: 
Summary: IT'S OK, NOT TO BAD
Review: This film is exactly what I thought it be, an ok romantic/comedy film. Reese Witherspoon does an ok job with the roll she was hired to do. But it's easy to see that she is out preformed by almost everybody on the film. To be honest I only reason I watched this is because Neal H. Mortiz produced the film. The film over all is pretty good. THIS IS THE WORST REVIEW I HAVE EVER WRITTEN, IT'S 2 SHORT.
Rating:
Summary: The South is gonna rise again
Review: Fluff in the tradition of Hollywood's screwball comedies of remarriage, lacking the wit or grace of such classics as HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) and THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937), but rescued from mediocrity by Reese Witherspoon. Steel magnolia Melanie Carmichael (Witherspoon) has conquered New York, establishing herself as a fashion designer and winning the town's most eligible bachelor. Yet she hesitates when the handsome, supportive Andrew (Patrick Dempsey) orchestrates the perfect marriage proposal: He's kept Tiffany's open after hours just so Melanie can select the ring of her dreams, a lavishly efficient way of demonstrating that he's both rich and romantic. Is Melanie daunted by the disapproving sniffs and quips of Andrew's formidable mother (Candice Bergen)? Of course not ' she's come too far to be daunted by a patrician WASP whose snootiness is cloaked in a tight smile and disdainfully impeccable manners. The trouble is where Melanie came from. Contrary to what she's led people to believe, Melanie was raised in scruffy Pigeon Creek, Ala., and her only connection to the wealthy Carmichael family was hanging out with their closeted gay son, Bobby Ray (Ethan Embry), back when she was pint-size hellion Melanie Smooter ' "Felony Melanie" to local law enforcement. Her parents, Earl and Pearl (Fred Ward, Mary Kay Place), live in a trailer and there's the vexing matter of high school sweetheart Jake (Josh Lucas), who wouldn't be a big deal if Melanie hadn't married him. So she hightails it back to sort things out, starting with the divorce papers Jake's refused to sign for six years. And just when she thinks she's out, Melanie gets dragged back into the down-home life. The good news is that for all its clumsiness, the movie manages some tidy twists on the tried-and-true formula, including several scenes predicated on Melanie's stuck-up conviction that the rubes she left behind don't recognize her new, svelte and trendy self. In fact, they not only know exactly who she is, but what she's been doing; online, the whole world's a small town. But for every small pleasure there's a coarse, obvious joke, and the movie would fall flat were it not for Witherspoon. You see why Melanie's overweening self-confidence ticks off old pals, but Witherspoon keeps you on Melanie's side. She may not look like the aristocratic Katharine Hepburn, but Witherspoon has mastered her trademark mix of snippy resolve and evident intelligence ' if only she weren't stuck in Melanie's awful clothes.
Rating:
Summary: She's Elle with an edge!
Review: Reese Witherspoon takes the best parts of her "Legally Blonde" character Elle Woods and turns her into a veritable steel magnolia. Melanie Carmichael is a young successful designer in New York who has just gotten glamorously and publicly engaged to the mayor's son. She has NO successfully divorced her first husband (about whom her new fiancee has no clue) back in Pigeon's Creek, Alabama. She heads back to her hometown for the first time in 7 years to make him finally sign the papers. She's not all sweetness and light -- she's human. Sometimes too human as deonstrated in the scene where she gets drunk in a local bar and insults all her childhood friends, proclaiming herself as better than them. It's sad. This is a cute little movie but not that great. It's typical pablum that is amusing at best. I am frankly sick of all the Southern fried bull that Southerns are so downhome and friendly and Yankees are evil. I can't wait till someone finally does a movie about someone from New York living in the South and deciding to return to THEIR roots because their new life isn't all it's so romatically cracked up to be.
Rating:
Summary: the objectificaton of women and of the south
Review: Sweet Home Alabama, directed by Andy Tennant, is a typical Hollywood movie for the fact that the lead actress is a blond gorgeous skinny female. Reese Witherspoon could be equated to the image of Barbie. Though there are also some nice aspects of this movie. This movie helps to objectify women causing the young women who watch Sweet Home Alabama to further try to figure out what is wrong with them. Melanie is always shown as dressed up and heaven forbid shown without make up. She makes herself into something that she feels other people want to see, especially the eyes of her hometown hunk and her city beau. This helps promote the idea that women should be all made up because she is not sure who is going to see her and that is how men want to see. This film does however confront the idea of the southern stereotype. This incorporates the fact that people view southerners as being slow, staying in their hometown and not amounting to much. When a person talks with a southern accent, people tend to see that person as that typecast. Though Reese's character makes the viewers aware that the stereotype is not true. Melanie depicts a woman who broke out of her hometown and goes to New York. She becomes a famous fashion designer. Though while this all is happening she tries to lose her accent as best she can as a result I feel that forces people to respect her a bit more. Though in the end when she returns back home, she still does not fit the southern stereotype. Sweet Home Alabama helps to further the stereotype of the blond Barbie who dresses up as she feels people want to see her. Though it does criticize the stereotype of a southerner.
Rating:
Summary: Not Bad at All
Review: Even though Witherspoon is practicallly a Hollywood Barbie, it was nice to see such a refined and sophisticated character go back to her roots in run-down country-town Alabama. It adds a human touch to it. It is always interesting to watch movies where people undergo the type of intrapersonal awareness like she did because everyone one, real or not, has to do the same thing. Even though it is a movie, I couldn't help but feel a surge of hope that there are good men in the world, because the two men that she's caught between are very good men in heart. This DVD will not be a waste of your money; there are nice little twists and turns to it, the sort of movie that gets you emotionally involved. 'Tis a good buy.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I loved this movie. I have many favorite chick flicks but this is a top 10. She is so cute!!! She can even pull off legally blonde no one else could get away with it, but she does.
Rating:
Summary: very charming movie
Review: This was a really good movie. Reece and Josh were great. You feel the warmth of southern hospitallity when the movie takes you to Alabama. Once you get there you don't want to leave. The movie takes you through a wide range of emotions. It makes you laugh and it chokes you up and it makes you laugh again. It mixes it all up and comes out charming. The supporting cast was great. There is an actress in a scene at Stella's Roadhouse that plays a very small part that I would like to know more about. She was so cute. She played Jakes date for the night. Her characters name was Starr. It was a very small part but she played it so perfect. Like the Beach Boys sing ..."and southern girls with the way they talk they knock me out when I'm down there". You'll see those girls with southern accents in this movie and there all so cute.
|
