My wife and I just got done watching this. It was pretty good, but not great. A sweet, light movie, but not as funny as I’d hoped it would be. In fact, most of what I think were meant to be jokes fell sort of flat for me.
And for some reason I kept expecting that she’d somehow end up with both guys, a la Bandits. Her 'Bama husband’s little speech about “having roots and wings” at the same time even seemed to be pointing to it. I wonder if the original intent of the script was to have them end up as a polyamorous triad, but it got re-written by PC producers…
sigh Or, I’m probably just thinking about it a bit too much, and it’s just a sappy sweet movie that wasn’t as funny as it could have been.
There’s no “Interstate 57” (or whatever Fred Ward said) in Alabama. Reese had to be either from Baldwin or Mobile County (only counties with a beach), and the only interstates down there are I-10 and I-65.
Details, details. I thought they did a decent job with the Southern humor, but they missed some details that would have been easy to fix with a quick trip to Mapquest.com.
Now I’m looking forward to seeing The Big Fish, Tim Burton’s newest movie, which is being filmed in Montgomery (my hometown) as we speak.
I thought it was moderately amusing when I left the theatre. By the time I drove home, I was so ticked off at Reese Witherspoon’s character that I thought she didn’t deserve either guy. She was rude and obnoxious to all her friends, demanding to Matthew McConnahy, outed her gay friend (whoopsie! I was drunk!) and rude, demanding and disrespectful of her parents. The writers used every Southern cliche they could think of. I’m not a native Southerner, but I’ve lived in Tennessee long enough to know there’s not a coonhound on every porch, the majority of the residents don’t live in mobile homes and older Black men don’t precede the names of white girls by “Miss”. In 18 years living here, I’ve never seen a crazy old guy still fighting the Civil War, although I have seen re-enacters. Although to my mind, most of the re-enacters approch it along the same lines as a SCA member would their role-playing. They study the history, the weapons, the lifestyle.
So basically, unlike some movies that grow on me after watching them once, this movie just ticked me off the more thought I gate to it.
Yeah, I agree… it definitely is not a movie that stands up to much thought.
In the real world, her past wouldn’t have been dismissed so easily and both guys probably would have dumped her either for being wishy-washy or being ddownright mean. And I couldn’t believe that the gay guy forgave her after she outed him. She was a complete bitch when she got drunk (and a few other times in the movie too). I wouldn’t want to marry her, even if she is cute.
This had to be the most annoying movie I’ve ever seen. Reese Witherspoon tried to overact and play up the part sooo much. The southern accents were soooo overdone that I almost threw up right on the people sitting in the row ahead of me in the theatre. I’ve lived in southern Georgia my whole life, and, like StGermain said, they used every Southern cliche that there ever was. That movie portrayed southerners as a bunch of dumb rednecks, and even if we are, that’s nothing to be ashamed of! (Plus, they didn’t have the Skynyrd version of “Sweet Home” anywhere in the entire movie. The band who played it in the scene where they were at the carnival thing was okay, but what about the version they played during the credits? They mutilated the song!!!) All in all, it was a terrible movie!
Reese Witherspoon’s character was extremely difficult to like. And I hated how her accent changed every 5 seconds. Not only was it annoying, but it sounded really fake as well.
Josh Lucas (while having gorgeous eyes) lacked the magnetism that I usually expect from actors who ‘try to get the girl back’. And Patrick Dempsey’s character was a pushover.
I really wanted to like this movie. I love Reese Witherspoon as an actress. But “Sweet Home Alabama” made me wish for those 2 hours of my life back.
That version in the end credits (I checked) was performed by Jewel. Apart from mutilating the song (which she did, I agree), she has a only a pale echo of her former strength. I’m a big fan of Jewel’s first album, but now… damn, I can barely even recognize her.
Cataclysm - The odd thing is, Reese Witherspoon is Southern. She was born and raised right here in Nashville, Tennessee. I guess with the switching back and forth perhaps she was trying to show that Melanie had trained the South out of her voice but when she got “down home” it came back. I don’t think it’s unusual for people who’ve been raised in two different regions to be able to switch from one to another. Look at Mel Gibson.
That’s the reason I didn’t have a problem with Amsterdam’s accent in “Gangs of New York”, as most people seemed to. I think that you pick up accents sort of out of self-preservation, and when you’re around people who speak one or the other, the appropriate accent comes out.
This movie was bad, bad, and super bad. I come from the south, and this movie was streotypical of southerners. From the accents, the drunkeness, the double wide trailers. The stupid people, the hound dog, everything.
They even had a Civil War re-enactment. Give me a break. Also, REESE IS A MAN’S NAME.
I thought the movie was mildly entertaining for most of it, but I really disappointed by the ending. It was just plain sappy how it ended with her going back to the old husband, and just throwing away the fiance, and him just happily going along with it.
But of course, Reese is adorable. She’ll be getting the younger Meg Ryan roles.
I liked it when I first saw it. I just rented the DVD, and still enjoyed it, but less so. It wasn’t that funny, though I like Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas quite a bit.
I knew from the beginning that she wouldn’t end up with the fiance. He was sweet and all, but it was obvious from almost the beginning that he also had a latent agenda—to “stick it” to his mom. He wasn’t being totally geniune, even though he didn’t, at first, realize it.
I didn’t think it was all that “anti-South”. I didn’t see any of the “hometown” characters from Alabama as being mocked—I liked them. I thought they were “colorful”, but no more or less “colorful” than her friends from NYC. I saw nothing negative about the ex-husband having a big ol’ houndog, and it didn’t occur to me that this meant that all Southerners have hound dogs. He had a dog. A nice dog. That is all. And the civil war reenactment? So what? I’ve known about them for a while and didn’t think that all the people who participated in them were weirdos and crackpots. I thought they were history buffs. Big deal! I see nothing wrong with that. And nothing in this movie disabused me of my notion that Civil War reenactors are history buffs—particularly of the history of the area where they live.
I guess I’m trying to say that I came away from that movie having no (in my mind) negative impressions of the South. I have visited Atlanta a few times (a friend used to live there) and I really liked it. It had great art stores—what’s not to like?
