Not just a fantasy masquerading as romantic comedy

Film review: Sweet Home Alabama

Ex-boyfriends turn out to be better looking, more caring and more successful after you haven’t seen them for years only if they are already married to somebody else. If that lost love from high school is still not taken and is still after you by the time he is over 30, then it is time to put on your running shoes and head for the hills.

Better still, go off to the bright lights of the big city where guys who look like JFK Jr. let you have your choice of diamond engagement rings from Tiffany’s and where there is always a limo outside lest you get your feet wet. The Jimmy Choos can soak because you can always get other pairs.

That I believe is the logical reaction to the situation Reese Witherspoon as Melanie Carmichael finds herself in the charming comedy Sweet Home Alabama. Hers is the life Mr. Ripley would have risked a sex change to have. Only 30, she is already a successful designer in New York. She has a rich, very attractive boyfriend and the beautiful mayor of the city for her future mother-in-law. So why on earth would she choose to go back to the small town in Alabama, which she left because she found herself unable to face a future with a loser of a husband?

Ostensibly, it is to tie up some loose ends before she gets on with her life. It turns out that she secretly married her high school sweetheart some years back and they have never been divorced. So she has to get those papers signed if she intends to marry her to-die-for fiance. While there she discovers she is really a small-town girl at heart and her husband who is still in love with her, is not really that bad after all.

Directed by Andy Tennant of Ever After and Anna and the King, Sweet Home Alabama puts forth the story that life in a quiet little town is far, far better than that in the big city and that poor folks possess a nobility of heart the rich ones don’t. Old-fashioned values reigned and you can leave your doors and windows open and not worry about anybody coming in and carting away your valuables. If Melanie were from Manila she would go home to a barrio with scenery akin to an Amorsolo painting and a husband who plows the field. Of course, come lunch time she brings him the food she lovingly cooked and they would sit on the porch looking at the stars in the evenings.

We do not really know if there was any truth to that premise in the past or if it was only something born out of man’s innate resistance to change. Judging from the way it is presented in Alabama, it seems more of a fairytale than Melanie’s style perfect existence in New York. How else would you classify the tale of the teen-age loser you loved once morphing into a loving, sensitive husband willing to sacrifice himself if it will make you happy? Think Beauty and the Beast because that is just what Jake played by Josh Lucas does in the movie.

If it is a fantasy masquerading as romantic comedy, then why did Sweet Home Alabama bring Jackie Chan’s Tuxedo to its knees when it opened in the US of A a few weeks ago? I can think of a few reasons: 1) There are more people with pride in their small towns all over America than those in the big city. 2) Times are hard and everybody can use a dream or two. 3) There is something about the inevitability of falling in love that never fails to bring in movie-goers. And 4) It is the luminous Reese Witherspoon.

She has done better work in the past. Check out Legally Blonde, Election, Cruel Intentions and Pleasantville but the promise she evinced as a future star on her first time out in Man on the Moon is now definitely fulfilled. Reese is a joy to watch even while mouthing inanities as Melanie. Putting the leading lady in a glamorous milieu does not hurt the film either. Besides, can you think of a girl who has never nurtured the ultimate fantasy of having two wonderful men vying for her affections and of being in a position to thumb her nose at a successful career in New York?

Tennant does a good job. Like his memorable Ever After, Sweet Home Alabama is sweet and charming. Josh Lucas, who was in A Beautiful Mind, shows depth, Patrick Dempsey as the jilted boyfriend is appropriately sympathetic, and the beautiful Candice Bergen as the mayor is in a role she has perfected. Check out Miss Congeniality. Then there is of course, the city of New York, whose star quality glows even brighter when used as the setting for a fairy tale.