Midafternoon of the living dead (12/20/02)
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Sweet Home Alabama. [Andy Tennant, 2002. Written by Douglas J. Eboch and C. Jay Cox.]
On the eve of her power marriage to trophy boyfriend/John-John clone Patrick Dempsey — son of the castiron-bitch mayor of New York, Candice Bergen, who views with the utmost suspicion the prospect of the interpolation of any foreign female influence between herself and “the future President of the United States” — selfmade, indeed, as we quickly figure out, largely selfinvented career woman Reese Witherspoon makes a hastily-organized pilgrimage to the land that gave her birth to settle a few items of business left unresolved when she blew town abruptly seven years ago to seek her fortune in the fashion industry — notably, an unterminated earlier marriage. Leaving the city that never sleeps to return to the city that has never regained consciousness, she arrives a couple of jumps ahead of the paparazzi and Madame Bergen’s private dicks and sets to work trying to get abandoned husband Josh Lucas [at least it isn’t McConaughey] to sign the divorce papers; and, maybe, with any luck, to persuade her amusingly demented trailertrash parents Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place to climb out of their Barcaloungers and hide under a rock from the tabloid jackals until, say, the dawn of the twenty-second century.
Once here, of course, the Sweet Southern Angel of Alabama and the Dark Urban Angel of New York war for her soul, with predictable result. In fact since the entire dramatic arc of the flick is obvious from the title sequence, if not from the title itself [or indeed from the name “Melanie Smooter”], the real substance of the scenario lies in its depiction of the detail of smalltown life [Garrison Keillor goes South]: the county fair, the re-enactment of the Civil War battle famous only here, the evening passed sitting on the water tower drinking beer dropping the bottles off when they’re finished, the Zen of trailers, the trophy room full of beauty pageant mementos, the erstwhile high school hotties who got knocked up graduation night and turned into baby machines, the lightning strike from a brooding thundercloud as metaphor for the cosmic connection between mystic soulmates [I want to go on and elaborate this in terms of static charge distributions, but never mind], the ritual visit to the roadhouse which can only end with the heroine staggering out to hurl on the front seat of the pickup, the sheriff who [like everyone else in this pregnant clime who passes the age of thirty] is a fount of cracker wisdom, the several renditions of the title song, and the gorgeous antebellum mansions that manage to suggest via architectural subtext that a plantation economy founded on human slavery must somehow have been a Good Thing after all. [Thankfully omitted: insects, humidity, Billy Bob.] — Though I did find myself amazed at the number of variations Ms. Witherspoon was able to pull on that highschool-reunion doubletake of belated recognition [followed inevitably by: the cruel putdown, the subsequent chagrin, the later apology], the only real questions after the three-hanky scene at the grave of her old coon dog Bear [her buried past] are how exactly the abandoned ex will prove himself the worthier object of her affections, and how close to the absolute last minute the wrong wedding ceremony will run before some masked man rides in to the rescue. [Believe it or not, the first time I saw
The Graduate I loved it; now I wish that every existing print could be destroyed and all knowledge of the scenario expunged from memory. In this instance, at least, lightning will never strike again in the same place.]
Not very coherent, at any rate, and inhabited for the most part by tired characters and situations. [I make the usual exception for onetime Lara Croft standin Rhona Mitra, who makes a rather belated entrance as the best-looking chickflick sidekick in recent memory.] But, fortunately for the authors, Reese Witherspoon can do no wrong.
____________Finny predators (9/20/02)
