Country Roads, take me home!!!!. Review on Sweet Home Alabama Movie

"You can take the girl out of the honky-tonk, but you can't take the honky-tonk out of the girl"

Yesterday, I was assailed by blues, worrying about a friend who was going through a bad phase... Feeling bored, I was swichting through channels on TV... The idiot box was not helping me get rid of my melancholy... And then, voila, on Zee Studio was playing Sweet Home Alabama, in fact methinks I missed the first 5 minutes of the movie, but what the hell, here goes....

Melanie Carmichael nee Smooter is a rising fashion designer torn between Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), her glamorous New York suitor, and Jake (Josh Lucas, very very very sexy, drool drool), the long-abandoned hometown sweetheart who has not gotten around to divorcing her after nearly a decade apart. Son of the city's Mayor (Candice Bergen), Andrew can give Melanie anything her heart desires, including a Tiffany engagement ring, which is a ROCK, even if I do say so myself. Melanie immediately travels to her hometown and confronts Jake in an attempt to end their relationship once and for all, but fond memories of the Alabama locals and her old husband offer an unlikely alternative to her future in the Big Apple. In fact she reconnects with her eccentric, blue-collar parents (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place, both very funny), as well as her old high-school friends. Jake, of course, is still in love with Melanie, though too proud to reveal how much he too has changed and grown since they parted under sad circumstances. There are only two available options here, and the movie charmingly paddles against the current by supporting country livin' in Alabama over wealth and position in New York. As Melanie rediscovers the simple pleasures of Pigeon Creek, her New York chic melts away, and she reverts to her former self, a prankish good ole gal who was always getting into trouble. The final showdown in which Melanie chooses between the prince and the hunk takes place at her southern-fried wedding to Andrew.

The movie, despite being obviously cliched, has a freshness and sweetness which kept me hooked. Reece Witherspoon  keeps the audience involved, establishing delightful chemistry with Dempsey and an amusing personality clash with Lucas. The chemistry between her and Josh is crackling, electric!!! The music is fresh and soothing to the ears, including Falling Down by Avril Lavigne and Gonna Make you Love me by Ryan Adams and of course Sweet Home Alabama, which goes like:

Sweet home alabama

Where the skies are so blue

Sweet home alabama

Lord, Im coming home to you

The movie jokingly refights the Civil War, with Melanie exemplifying a down-home Helen of Troy who was stolen by the Yankees. When the males of Pigeon Creek are not busy farming or getting drunk at the local pool hall, they're dressing as Confederates for elaborate re-creations of Civil War battles. Without becoming strident, the movie favors these earthy, yahooing, latter-day Confederates over the cool, sophisticated New Yorkers with their overly refined tastes and hoity poloity ways. However, there was a surprise element in Nathan Lee Graham, who plays a gay fashion designer who is friends with Melanie. His character's potential relationship with a gay friend of Melanie's in Alabama is one of the little subplots that keep "Sweet Home Alabama" on its toes and keep the audience guessing. Whether you're a bustling businessperson in a busy city a laidback

local in the middle of nowhere, Sweet Home Alabama will make you smile provided you don't think about it too much.

Sometimes what you're looking for is right where you left it. Make sure you claim whats yours before its too late!