TechnoFILE is copyright and a registered trademark © ® of
Pandemonium Productions.
All rights reserved.
E-mail us Here!
Sweet Home Alabama

Sweet Home Alabama on DVD

Reese Witherspoon is marvelous as Melanie Carmichael, an up and coming New York fashion designer whose life is turned topsy turvey when she returns to her rural Alabama home after a seven year absence.

She’s just about to hit the big time in the fashion world, it appears, and her life couldn’t get any better - but it does. Her boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey), who also just happens to be the son of the Big Apple’s pompous and arrogant Democrat mayor (Candice Bergen), surprises her with a trip to Tiffany’s where he proposes to her and lets her pick out her own rock.

She’s overwhelmed and pleased, and accepts, but she has a secret she needs to take care of before she can marry the guy: she’s already married to her childhood sweetheart (Josh Lucas) back home in Alabama, so she needs to head there quickly for a quick and quiet divorce.

So we have the beginnings of a typical Hollywood outing where the sophisticate deigns to visit “flyover country” where the people are rubes and boobs - except that this movie turns all that around in a most refreshing manner.

Melanie, it turns out, isn’t really Melanie Carmichael but rather is (or was) “Felony Melanie,” a rambunctious kid everyone remembers - not all kindly - from the swath she and her friends made through the quiet Southern life of their formative years.

And she’s in for a real surprise as her well-earned New York snootiness blows up in her face and she discovers that, while these people may not live in Manhattan and drive Mercedes Benzes, and while their tastes and their needs are more simple than life would have it in the Big Apple, they aren’t rubes and boobs and, in fact, have much to offer. In many ways, she discovers, Alabama life is more real and more important than the glitter of the great white way.

And darn it, she still has feelings for Jake - who it turns out has also changed during the years they’ve been apart.

It’s all pretty predictable in the larger sense, but with wonderful characters and a nice turnaround that portrays the rural people as the ones with real character while the limousine liberal New Yorkers (as personified by Bergen’s mayor), are hypocritical and superficial.

Well, not all the New Yorkers. Andrew, the finance, is actually a guy with substance and would probably be a good catch for Melanie, and some of her New York friends who come down to Alabama for her wedding to Andrew are decent people as well.

But Alabama is sweet, and it’s home, and it doesn’t take Melanie long to discover that, for all its benefits, New York can’t hold a candle to Alabama, where people are real and life is worth savoring - not wrestling to the ground as you reach for the brass ring.

We don’t get to see whether or not she continues her designing career, though it looks as if she won’t - and that’s a shame because in this day and age it doesn’t matter where you live any more. Oh well.

The supporting cast, especially Dempsey and Lucas - and Mary Kay Place and Fred Ward as Melanie’s parents - are excellent. In fact, other than Bergen as the mayor (who comes off as Murphy Brown holding elected office), this movie is full of believable and likeable characters.

The DVD’s pretty good, too. It was released in anamorphic widescreen (16x9 TV compatible), which is as it should be, and the picture quality is for the most part very good. There are a few soft scenes, but on the whole the picture’s sharp and the colors are rich. Audio is Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and though there isn’t much surround the audio quality is also very good.

Extras include the original ending, which we preferred in some ways (though the director explains why they dumped it and his reasons make sense - though they also hint at pandering to the preview audience). There’s also a selection of 8 deleted scenes introduced by director Andy Tennant (who also provides a running commentary accompanying the movie), and SHeDAISY’s “Mine All Mine” music video.

What? No “Sweet Home Alabama” video? Zounds! The song does figure in the movie, of course, and that’s as it should be, Mr. Young.

Sweet Home Alabama, from Touchstone Home Video
109 min. anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 TV compatible, Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Fred Ward, Mary Kay Place, Jean Smart and Candice Bergen
Produced by Neil H. Moritz, Stokely Chaffin,
Written by C. Jay Cox, Directed by Andy Tennant

 

Tell us at TechnoFile what YOU think

Google
 
Web www.technofile.com
 

Home

Audio/Video

Automotive

Blu-rays

Computers

Gadgets

Games

Letters

Miscellaneous

Search

Welcome

Support TechnoFile
via Paypal

TechnoFILE's E-letter
We're pleased to offer
our FREE private,
subscription-based
private E-mail service.
It's the "no brainer"
way to keep informed.

Our Privacy Policy

Updated May 13, 2006