Intermission: Cliches, fluff keep 'Sweet Home' from its potential

Jim Wunderle is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

Last week, when discussing "The Banger Sisters," it was pointed out that in some cases, great actors can overcome less-than-satisfying scripts. In the case of "The Banger Sisters," Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon proved the point.

This time out, however, even the talents and screen charm of Reese Witherspoon can't fully rescue a screenplay which resembles something chopped together in a first-year scriptwriting class.

Screenwriter C. Jay Cox and director Andy Tennant (a veteran of television, he did "The Amy Fisher Story") spend so much time stooping to the lowest common denominator and trying to be cute, they lose most of the charm in "Sweet Home Alabama," a film that could have been a nice screwball comedy.

Some scenes work, and Witherspoon herself is as enjoyable on-screen as ever.

The film opens with a flashback to two 10-year-old kids getting caught in a thunderstorm. Lightning strikes twice in the same place, turning some of the sand on the beach into a glob of glass. With this the boy and girl pledge their undying love to one another.

The dream ends abruptly and we're in modern-day New York, where Melanie Carmichael (Witherspoon) is a fashion designer on the eve of her first major show. She's a bundle of nerves, and when she arrives home, her apartment is covered in roses.

She soon gets a call from her boyfriend, Andrew, who's a rich young politician and also the son of the mayor of New York, played by Candice Bergen.

It is he who has sent the flowers, and he soon has another surprise for her.

His driver picks Melanie up and takes her in the service entrance of a darkened building. When the lights come on she's in Tiffany's, and Andrew asks her to marry him. When she accepts, he tells her to take her pick from anything in the store. Not bad for a rising politician.

Andrew and Melanie try to keep the engagement a secret, but the press soon blows that for them, and the person most surprised is the mayor. She's sure that Melanie is up to no good and decides to dig around in her past.

From here the action shifts to the little town of Pigeon Creek, Ala., Melanie's hometown. It turns out she does have a few secrets and loose ends to tie up before she can marry Andrew. She hasn't been all that forthcoming about her past, claiming to have grown up on a plantation estate rather than in the doublewide mobile home her parents still occupy.

There's also the matter of her childhood sweetheart they were the kids on the beach in the flashback. It seems Melanie and Jake got married a few years back; she later ran off to New York to reinvent herself, and Jake has yet to sign the divorce papers. Even in liberal New York, bigamy is still frowned upon.

Jake again refuses to sign the papers and tries to have Melanie arrested for trespassing, but the local sheriff points out if they're still married, it's her house too. In one of the scenes that isn't beset by clich, Melanie decides that if Jake wants a wife, she'll be one. She sells all of his furnishings, cashes out the joint bank account and redoes the whole house.

As the tensions between the two rise, the old sparks begin to fly as well. The couple seem to have a love-hate relationship.

As Melanie's rather wild past is slowly revealed she was known in her teens as Felony Melanie and despite getting rip-roaring drunk one night and telling all of her old friends what hayseed goobers they are, it's apparent that she might be longing for her roots here in Pigeon Creek.

Who cares if she's got a lucrative career as a designer, a fiance who takes her to a private session at Tiffany's or that she's about to become the daughter-in-law of the mayor of New York? Obviously, not the screenwriter.

So, it comes as no surprise that Andrew and Mom have to show back up on the scene.

When much of her past comes out, her relationship with Andrew becomes a mirror image of hers with Jake.

All of the inevitable happens, including an improbable gay romance subplot, a botched wedding, a big surprise from one of her beaus, even a visit to Melanie's old coondog's grave.

Does anyone watching "Sweet Home Alabama" not know what's going to happen? Probably not, but most of the audience seemed to laugh a lot, so they obviously don't care about the foregone conclusions.

Again, Witherspoon was great, and Bergen was, too, bringing a lot of believable caustic bite to her role, and some of the lesser characters made nice filler for Pigeon Creek.

The problem here is the writing is a piece of fluff filled with stereotypical plot devices.