SWEET HOME ALABAMA (Andy Tennant, 2002)

Reviewed: September 21st, 2001

Intro_________________

Terrorists rejoice! Though it's been over a year since your last successful attack, Touchstone Pictures has picked up your slack with Sweet Home Alabama, a sickening, blasphemous destruction of everything that is good about going to the movies...

No, too lax.

September 11th's anniversary comes a little late this year in the form of Sweet Home Alabama, a repugnant, lobotomizing assault on everything that is good about being a human...

Hmmm, no, admittedly a tad over-the-top.

Stupefi-ingly idiotic, frequently nonsensical and about as funny/pleasurable as watching a newborn baby's eyes being gouged out with a fork...

Yeah, now we're cooking.

...Sweet Home Alabama is easily the worst film I've seen this year.

Principled_________________

Operating under the 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all' mantra, I'll...ummm... end this review right now. No, I'll state that Reese Witherspoon is a very talented and greedy actress who should be ashamed of herself for inflicting Sweet Home Alabama on the moviegoing public. To see her wasted in a film so depressively horrid makes me wanna drink a glass of Drano.

And also: Josh Lucas (who plays her down South love interest) is a charismatic, very relaxed screen presence. After small but memorable roles in films like You Can Count On Me, The Deep End and A Beautiful Mind, Lucas treats his first starring role with infinitely more respect and effort than it deserves. He's costarring in The Hulk next year and I expect other big performances from him in the future.

Two Anecdotal Asides_________________

(1) Director Andy Tennant (Fools Rush In, Ever After, Anna and the King) was scheduled to speak after the screening of Sweet Home Alabama I attended. Hence the moment the end credits started rolling I bolted up outta my seat and ran out the door at the risk of physically accosting Tennant if I had allowed myself to lay eyes on him. In the future, if I ever see him at a public function, I make no promise of not punching him in the stomach.

(The prevailing thought in my brain during much of Tennant's film was 'Just how and where did the cast/crew find the energy and wherewithal to hoist themselves out of bed each morning to work on this torture? I know a man/woman's gotta make a living but toiling away on Sweet Home Alabama is like going to war...')

(2) Walking home from the screening I glimpsed in the distance a Sweet Home Alabama bus stop poster and I immediately had to avert my eyes. I (literally) couldn't look anywhere near the poster at the risk of feeling queasy.

How Many Times Is Sweet Home Alabama -- the Lynyrd Skynyrd song -- played in the film?_____

Twice and both occurrences made me wanna dry heave. First, the song is covered by an atrocious band at some carnival-type place. Suffice to say, the movie is stopped dead in its tracks so Witherspoon et al. can dance to it. Then at the end Witherspoon plays the song on a jukebox.

As I type this review, Neil Young's song "Southern Man" is playing via my headphones on repeat. A bit of history, paraphrased from hyperrust.org: 'Young wrote "Southern Man" (which is on his album After the Goldrush) as an indictment of the stereotypical southern racist attitudes that were somewhat prevalent in The South during the 60s/early 70s. A few years later (in 1974) Lynyrd Skynyrd decided to answer those songs from the "Southern Rock" point of view, and so was born the song Sweet Home Alabama. The song, which espouses some of the good things about Southern culture, includes the lines: "I hope Neil Young will remember, A southern man don't need him around anyhow."'

Lynyrd Skynyrd's wrong. Believe me, after enduring Sweet Home Alabama, I need Young desperately.

(Also: As soon as I came home from the screening I popped To Die For into my player to cleanse my brain by watching Nicole Kidman -- hot and sexy and alluring as all fucking hell -- dancing to Sweet Home Alabama in the pouring rain.)

Assorted Learnings From Sweet Home Alabama_________________

- People from "The South" are eccentric, freewheeling, fun, kind and smart.

- People from "The North" are vapid, superficial and downright mean.

- Pregnancy complications, somehow, automatically make you wanna abandon your one true soulmate.

- To get a divorce, both parties must sign documents, even if one is absolutely unwilling to ever do so. (This, which happens to be the foundation of the entire film, BTW, is completely false. Ever hear on the news about people having to get restraining orders against their recently divorced, ex-significant others... or murdering their ex-spouses... hmm, well, let's think about this... something tells me those people weren't too eager to sign any paperwork letting their bedmates go quietly into the night...)

- Love is not a human emotion.

- It's okay to drive drunk, so long as someone is following behind you.

- There are still filmmakers on this planet willing to shoot the obligatory romantic comedy final kiss in slow, slow motion.

Be More Specific_________________

- Reese Witherspoon's relationship with her parents -- whom, at the start of the film she hasn't seen in seven years -- is completely baffling. Her and her mom's allegiances to one another keep vacillating wildly and without explanation; first it seems like mommy didn't want Reese to move North, then she seems happy for her, then not, then who the fuck knows. And Reese's relationship with her dad? Well, she hasn't seen him in seven years and when they finally talk it's not a 'hey, it's wonderful to finally see you, what have you been up to, etc.' Instead, it's 'let's rehash for the convenience of plotting purposes all the bad, comic deeds Reese's character committed when she was younger.'

- Reese makes Husband Who Won't Give Her Divorce's life a living hell in retribution for his not signing the papers (i.e. she steals all his money, fucks up his house, etc.). During this whole time you're thinking, why don't you just sign the fucking papers, you goddamn idiot?! Why are you enduring Reese's horrible wrath when you can just get her outta your life for good?

Finally, fifty-three minutes into the movie (yes, I specifically looked at my watch), he signs the papers. At this point I prayed there would be some glitch in the space-time continuum and the movie would in fact end. Unfortunately, it unspooled for almost an hour longer.

- The Northern Man Reese is engaged to, the man Reese is supposed to be madly in love with and going through all this paper-signing bullshit for in the first place, is forgotten about for the vast majority of the movie's runtime. During all of Reese's time in the South, no mention is made of him (save for one inexplicable, desperate screenwriting aside in which he calls her cell, and she answers it, I quote: "I love you. I love you. I love you."). Thus their love (remember: non-human emotion) is not the least bit plausible. Doubly thus, the ending, when ::gasp:: she decides not to marry him, is about as surprising as Woody Allen's next film using white lettering over a black background for its title sequence.

- Reese spends so little of her screentime as a "hoity toity, little bitch" (as one character so poetically puts it), that she's not very believable as such. She settles back into her Southern groove way too fast. I sense the screenwriter eventually realized this, and scrambling to do damage control, he has her declare midway through the film (something to the effect of): "Well, I like NY, but The South feels right also." Way to totally undermine your movie's whole premise, Mr. Screenwriting Person.

To quote the great Alexandra DuPont (whose stylistic leanings I so gleefully rip off in protest of her curious M.I.A. status): I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

And Finally,_________________

Oh screw this review and this godforsaken movie, life's too fucking short.

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