Sweet Home Alabama

INFORMATION:

Movie Title: Sweet Home Alabama
Movie Studio: Touchstone Pictures
Parent Company: Walt Disney
Other Movies: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Pretty Woman, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Dead Poets Society, The Waterboy
Producer: David Brown and Michael Tolkin
Director: Andy Tennant
Writer: Douglas J. Eboch and C. Jay Cox
Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Ethan Embry, Candice Bergen, Fred Ward, Mary Kay Place, Jean Smart

Q&A:

Sweet Home Alabama stars Reese Witherspoon as Melanie Carmichael, later found out to be a fake name. Melanie is an Alabama-raised socialite who moves to New York City to achieve her goals and reaches outstanding heights as a fashion designer. She begins to feel as if she is on top of the world, with a great boyfriend named Andrew, played by Patrick Dempsey, and a flourishing career. But when Andrew proposes, Melanie feels as if she must “inform” her family down South that she rarely speaks to of her decisions. This is especially true of her high-school sweetheart turned husband Jake, played by Josh Lucas, who refuses to divorce her. Melanie believes this is because he is stubborn and wants to make things difficult for her, but she later finds out that he doesn’t sign the divorce papers in the hopes that Melanie will come back to him someday. With huge determination to get her husband to sign the divorce papers, Melanie returns home. As she reconnects with her family and her old friends, including Bobby Ray played by Ethan Embry, she begins to realize that home might really be where the heart is and that she is still in love with her husband. This proves to be a major complication when Andrew decides to pay Melanie a surprise visit, but he storms around town looking for “Melanie Carmichael”. He doesn’t find her, because her real name is “Melanie Smooter”, which she changed to Carmichael because that is the name of the richest family in town. He is upset that she lied to him but forgives her and meets her real parents, played by Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place. His mother, played by Candice Bergen, is the mayor of New York City and she believes that it was extremely wrong of Melanie to lie to Andrew by failing to mention her husband and lying to him about her roots. Andrew still wishes to marry Melanie, but she simply cannot go through with the wedding because “she gave her heart away a long time ago”. Melanie and Jake end up back together. I saw this movie when it was in theaters. I was interested in seeing this film because Reese Witherspoon is my favorite actress and I always love any movie that she is in. I was also living in Georgia at this time and I thought it would be interesting to see how the deep South was depicted in this film. I like the chemistry between the actors in this movie. There is many funny conversations and situations and you can tell that the actors probably got along very well on and off set. I also like the message the movie tries to send: sometimes the thing you are looking for the most is the thing that is right in front of you. I would definitely recommend this movie to someone else because it is the classic romantic comedy with a few original details, like the comedic undertones of how different a small town in Alabama is from New York City. And of course, Reese Witherspoon never gives a disappointing performance.

Trailer