Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Sweet Home Alabama Blu-ray Movie Review

Honky Tonk Woman

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 30, 2012

Critics didn't warm to Sweet Home Alabama, but it sold a lot of tickets and cemented Reese Witherspoon's status, after Legally Blonde, as a box office draw. She's tried to anchor a romantic comedy of equal appeal ever since, and though a few have done all right, none has matched the attraction of this fairy tale about a southern Cinderella torn between two princes, one on either side of the Mason-Dixon line. As director Andy Tennant (Hitch) discusses at length in the accompanying commentary, the filmmakers took great pains to make their heroine choose between a pair of suitors where neither had an obvious flaw. Sweet Home Alabama thereby departs from the usual formula of romantic comedy in which the deck has been stacked and the choice is clear to the audience, if not immediately, then eventually. Indeed, after an early test screening, all the men in the focus group wanted to know what the rejected lover had done that was so wrong?

Witherspoon was born in New Orleans and raised mostly in Nashville, and she has said that being southern is one of three stereotypes against which she's had to struggle (the other two being blonde and female). Her southern heritage made her ideal casting for Melanie Smooter/Carmichael, the girl from Pigeon Creek, Alabama, who reinvented herelf in New York City, fudging a few key details about her past in the process. Charlize Theron was originally cast; depending on which source you read, she either dropped out by choice or was replaced for fear she didn't have the comic chops. Theron would no doubt have done fine work, but Witherspoon's grasp of the subtleties of regional displacement has an authenticity that can't be faked. The tiniest calibrations of her drawl have significance. "You know that accent of yours is a whole lot thicker when you're dreaming", says one of Melanie's New York assistants.

Director Tennant might have received more affection from critics if he'd left in some of the North/South comedy he describes cutting from the film in his commentary, but he risked losing too much of his audience. Ticket buyers came to see three attractive people wrangle out their romantic tribulations in an idealized world where real-life issues are treated lightly enough that everyone can laugh them off. Speaking of spousal abuse, the new sheriff says, with just the right amount of emphasis: "We take that stuff pretty serious nowadays." Tennant makes this kind of material work by relegating it to the periphery where it belongs in a light-hearted picture. You laugh, but you're still watching Witherspoon and her two beaus.

Melanie Carmichael, as she's currently known (Witherspoon), is a rising star in the New York fashion world, a former protégé of celebrity designer Frederick Montana (Nathan Lee Graham). Now on the verge of launching her own line during the crucial season of Fashion Week, Melanie is running on anxiety and insomnia, as she works feverishly with her staff led by the very British Tabatha Wadmore-Smith (Rhona Mitra) to prepare for the big event. It's a long way from the small Alabama town of Pigeon Creek, where a ten-year-old Melanie (played by Dakota Fanning) once ran on the beach with her childhood sweetheart Jake Perry (Thomas Curtis as a boy), had her first kiss and got struck by lightning (the real kind discharged by actual clouds).

Melanie is comforted in her hour of stress by her gallant boyfriend, Andrew Hennings (Patrick Dempsey, dreamy even before McDreamy), who, in addition to being handsome and wealthy, is also the son of New York Mayor Kate Hennings (a scene-stealing Candace Bergen) and, in his mother's eyes, the future U.S. president. Before Melanie can catch her breath from her clothing line's debut, Andrew has proposed in a storybook manner you can glimpse in the extra screenshots. Then his mother blurts out their engagement to the press.

Now Melanie has a big problem. (Stop here if you're finicky about spoilers, although I'm not about to give away anything important.) When Melanie came to New York, she changed more than her name. She recreated her past into that of a Southern belle "fresh off the plantation" instead of the considerably more modest circumstances that the name "Smooter" implies. Her youthful nickname was "Felony Melanie", due to a penchant for raising hell. She also omitted some unfinished business with the grownup version of Jake Perry, the boy on the beach, now played by Josh Lucas, whose limpid blue eyes have such a hypnotic effect on female viewers that, when director Tennant cut eight frames—eight frames!—from a key close-up near the end of the film, editors Tracey Wadmore-Smith and producer Stokely Chaffin, both women, insisted he put them back. (On the commentary, Tennant points them out precisely. The ladies weren't wrong.)

Melanie and Jake married out of high school, and their divorce was never finalized. Determined to resolve her situation once and for all, Melanie races down to Pigeon Creek and is immediately reminded that her home town doesn't step to a New York beat. The bulk of Sweet Home Alabama is about Melanie reconnecting with her past, often against her will, as she encounters first Jake and then other familiar figures, many of them changed in unexpected ways, but all still rooted in familiar soil. A bevy of impressive character actors fill out the cast, as Melanie explores what it meant to swap out one life for another. As their mutual friend, Bobby Ray (Ethan Embry), observes, "It's not like Jake's the only one 'round here that you run out on." Others that Melanie abandoned include her affectionate but ambivalent mother and seedily debonair father, Pearl and Earl (Mary Kay Place and Fred Ward, both perfection); Jake's gang of cronies, one of whom is now married to a baby machine named Lurlynn (Heavenly Creatures' Melanie Lynskey); a former high school classmate and teller at the local bank (where they don't believe in ATMs), Dorothea (Mary Lynn Rajskub, shortly before she became Chloe on 24); Dorothea's sweetheart, Sheriff Wade (Courtney Gains), who also went to high school with Melanie and Jake and now rounds up people like [i]they[/i] used to be; and Melanie's soon-to-be-former mother-in-law, Stella Kay Perry (Jean Smart), who owns the local night spot.

Stella's bar is the site of one of Sweet Home Alabama's great sequences, where Melanie's frustration boils over under the influence of alcohol and exhaustion, and she insults everyone in sight as a last-ditch effort to sever the ties she feels tugging at her. Witherspoon draws so skillfully on her roots that at moments you can even hear echoes of the white trash caricature she memorably portrayed in the gothic grotesque, Freeway. "You can take the girl out of the honky tonk, but you can't take the honky tonk out of the girl", says Bobby Ray. For all the detours and sharp turns the plot takes, it's lines like that (not to mention the title) that tell the audience where everyone is going.

Sweet Home Alabama Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Veteran British cinematographer Andrew Dunn shot Sweet Home Alabama, having shot Ever After: A Cinderella Story for Andy Tennant; he would later shoot Hitch. Although Dunn can do highly stylized photography with the best of them (as he did in Precious), his special skill is in casting enough of a romantic sheen over daily life to sustain the romantic illusion without calling too much attention to the trickery. He's the perfect DP for a romantic comedy of this nature.

Unfortunately, the 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of Sweet Home Alabama is not one of Disney's better catalog titles. The softness of the image is probably attributable to Dunn's original photography and to the fact that the film was released shortly before digital intermediates began to take over the post-production process. But none of that excuses the frequent and intrusive video noise that comes and goes throughout the film's running time, infecting one shot, vanishing in the next, then reappearing like a persistent cough. Screenshots will not reflect the full extent of this phenomenon, because it appears only in motion. The key point, however, is that it shouldn't be there. With source elements in good shape (which these certainly appear to be) and contemporary scanning technology, noise of this degree should not be an issue.

At least the problem hasn't been arbitrarily hidden by digital filtering. The Blu-ray's image shows a respectable level of detail, even a very good level when the noise isn't in the way. The black levels are stable, and the color palette provides a subtle but distinct contrast between the gentle warmth of the south and the somewhat harsher black, blue and beige of Melanie's adopted New York. If there were compression or other artifacts in the image, they were hidden by the video noise.

Sweet Home Alabama Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original 5.1 soundtrack is presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1, and it's an effective romantic comedy mix that provides a good sense of ambiance for crowded scenes like Melanie's fashion show, the press encounter with the mayor at Lincoln Center and Stella's bar. Otherwise, the use of the rear channels is limited, and you certainly don't play Sweet Home Alabama for its discrete sound effects. Bass extension is tight enough that the guttural barking of Jake's hound resonates deeply, and the initial lightning strike makes a suitable impression. Dialogue is clear and centered. George Fenton's original score plays with the right impact, and the selection of pop tunes, notably the Lynyrd Skynyrd title track (alternately performed by Cornbread and Jewel), fits right in.

Sweet Home Alabama Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Andy Tennant: Tennant supplies an easygoing account that alternates anecdotes about the story's development with tales from the set. What he tries to convey, and largely succeeds in doing, is the extent to which filmed storytelling is a long process of trial and error at all stages: writing, on the set, in postproduction. By the end of the commentary, it's clear that there are literally hours of deleted scenes that could have been included.



• "Off the Cutting Room Floor"/Deleted Scenes (SD; 1.33:1 & 2.35:1, non-enhanced; 17:55): There are eight scenes, each preceded by an introduction from director Tennant. An entire group relates to a character, Erin (Katharine Towne), an assistant to Melanie, who was eliminated from the final cut and survives now only as a photograph in the montage accompanying the end credits.



• Alternate Ending (SD; 1.33:1 & 2.35:1, enhanced; 2:45): This is the film's original ending, which was reshot months after principal photography wrapped. Tennant explains the change in a brief introduction.



• "Mine All Mine" Music Video (SD; 1.85:1, enhanced; 3:51): The song by SHeDAISY plays during the closing credits.

Sweet Home Alabama Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Although Andy Tennant and his collaborators may have worked hard to make both of Melanie's romantic choices good ones, they did build in a difference, but it didn't strike me until this viewing of the film. One of Melanie's suitors has a mother who's warm, gentle, tolerant and charming. The other answers to a tough, acerbic cookie who finds fault continuously and is always the most demanding person in the room. Leaving aside the obvious virtues of the men in question, who would you want for a mother-in-law? With due warning for the relative weakness of the video presentation, I recommend Sweet Home Alabama for the film and its cast. The extras are a nice bonus.