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The CLUAS Archive: 1998 - 2011

Film Review: Sweet Home Alabama

Reese Witherspoon goes North, or is it South? Or is it anywhere?

Gather closer to the fire now folks, I gotta story to tell.

Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home AlabamaNow this here tale pertains to a pretty young southern gal name a Melanie. Like a lot of young belles her age, Melanie wanted to go to the big city and see some of the world. Now you can't blame a girl for trying, but y?see while Melanie was away in dem dere New York, she started getting notions about herself. Started thinking ?I make fancy clothes for a living, I must be pretty fancy myself?. So in no time at all, Melanie says ?Adios Alabama, I?m a city slicker now?.

Now folks, if you are still paying attention, this is where the story gets kinda interesting. Cause y?see little miss fancy drawers wants to get hitched to the Mayor's son in the big city. And in order for her to go through with this here matrimony, she has to get a d-i-v-or-r-c-e from her old man in the south. So off she trots in her gas guzzzlin? automobile back home to get her ex's x on the dotted line. Only he's as still as mean as a grizzly with a sore paw, on account of her walking out on him all those years ago. So he won't sign. She's in a whole heap a? trouble now, cause without that signature, she won't be walking up no New Yoirk aisle. She don't help matters neither by hanging round town ragging on his friends and generally thinking she better than all the white thrash in this redneck town. To make things worse, her future old man turns up in town, to pay a surprise visit to her Ma and Pa. She's in tighter than a hog in a hay barn. How she gets out of this conundrum, well you'll just have to discover for yourself.

All I can say in passing is, before she gets her man, she certainly gets her comeuppance. So the moral of this story is folks, wherever you go in life, you can't escape from your past. Now ain't that the truth?

Brian Kelly