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| Sweet Home Alabama | 
 enlarge | Director: Andy Tennant
Actors: Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Candice Bergen, Mary Kay Place
Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.99
Buy Used: $4.77
You Save: $15.22 (76%)
New (46) Used (69) Collectible (1) from $4.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  371 reviews
Sales Rank: 1045
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 109
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 02912600
UPC: 786936208030
EAN: 0786936208030
ASIN: B00007E2F5
Theatrical Release Date: September 27, 2002
Release Date: February 4, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Enjoyment January 12, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have enjoyed watching this movie over and over again. It came to me in good condition.
 Funny but relies too much on cliches January 1, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Fashion designer Melanie has got it all - a breakthrough in her career, and a handsome fiance. The only problem is that she's already got a husband, and must get rid of him fast.
This movie definitely has its moments, but relies too much on stereotypes, some of them really offensive, to get the full five-stars. The homosexuals, the stereotypical backward southern town with charming-but-below-average-IQ redneck residents dwelling in double-wides, drunken brawls over the pool table, ad nauseum.
Still, it's funny, and Reese Witherspoon is always worth watching. Candice Bergen is great as the snotty New York mayor mom. No real language issues or violence to prevent it from being a family film
Sweet, Light , Funny August 24, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I really enjoy this movie. In fact, I've watched it more than once. It not only is a comedy, it also has some romance and sweetness in it.
 Sweet homophobic Alabama July 26, 2006
3 out of 38 found this review helpful
Hesitation over the title of this review was purely for consideration of people who might have taken offense at the use of homosexuality in the traditional role as a comedic device for dehumanizing people. In this Fantasy Fashion Designer Barbie role play kit, we are presented with two suspect homosexuals, the flamboyant Black assistant fashion designer, and the quarry closet homosexual who has to have his disorder pointed out to him, preferably in an embarrassing public denunciation. Barbie has to learn the need for her to script and typecast sexuality around her because she is the sensation (fem fatal) for persuasion predominant in the sphere of people around her. A Countrified Fantasy Fashion Designer Barbie Killer Instinct--role play kit. And it is perhaps an interesting microcosm of analysis to vaguely note the teddy bear appeal assigned to the openly gay Black character, artistic, talented and unflinching. It is the idea that for women, gay men make the best friends, that I won't quote yet I seem to have heard it somewhere in the cultural media stream at some time in the past. Thus a possible depolarizing of "sexual prowess" is covertly used to adjust traditional racial stereotypes, (and that term is taken straight from multicultural theory). Further complicating the plight of the Black male character in the film, is the Civil War reinactment-buffooning in the presumably lingering prejudicial South, where no doubt the image of African Americans as sexually iconoclastic, bandages wounded White male libido traditionally injured by jibes of phallic innuendo. Surely considerate people everywhere are tired of this dredging up of unpleasant or bawdy associations; circumcision is perhaps the original anthrospecific-insult (precursor to sexual dysfunction then marital dysfunction and the whole syndrom of social ills that erode social fabric from its core) but anthropologically the film is enriched elsewhere.
Irving's character Jenny Garp, feminist author, cites being made a "sexual suspect", clearly there are procedural tolls long since put in place to accustom these suspicions of men and women. Half asleep through the whole movie, I forget the Witherspoon character's name, but she essentially indicts a suspect homosexual male at one point, out of an urge perhaps, to solidify a group cathartic that had pleasantly gone on over the life of the individual in that community as a dissatisfactory standard of humane and non-discriminatory practice. Barbie's tantrum must be a blood letting, her role is too prominent for softer and tactful, retiring or inhibited social display...she must be the "bell of the ball", the "queen bee" with attendant phalanxes of maidens, a sort of warrior aspect appreciated and encouraged in the feminine; whereas dominant female politicians must stride more carefully to avoid becoming vilified on a masculine playing field. There are no masculine defenders of the imasculine, no Garps to befriend gay football players. Historic Southern racism is lampooned, only to be replaced with the sexism of preferential or select social stereotyping and discrimination based on repression spawned feminine outlets of gay labeling, a favorite innocuous quarry for young girls influenced by such movies. It's a man's world, so go kick the "queers", it's perfectly safe.--is the message. Really it is just a comprehensive green light for offensive young women to go around tarring everybody with the gay label they don't particularly approve of--such sweethearts, somebody slap them. The gay prompt has grown to such dimensions in the mass medias adverse stimulus conditioning we had to endure the whole "Brokeback Mountain" odyssey and cultural crisis. Something just keeps wanting to load it into everybody's heads.
Murphy Brown is the elder role model for Fashion Barbie, what its like to grow up, become a crochety, semi-retired blonde who has scaled political obstacles, become Mayor, wear a suit, and combat the depreciation of appearing older than a plastic toy fresh from the hot injection mold, while she dotes over the marital selection of her son. Bergen is what happens to Barbies when they grow old, a question that any would be Barbie surely asks, once the question has been loaded for her through symbolism, because just as surely, the pretense of a "Barbie" precludes higher order thinking skills, any anticipatory or empathic reflection--Barbie being the conceited thing it is. That conceit is no more abundantly clear when the quarry queer, a meek and unassuming character is viciously stereotyped, "Why don't you just admit you're a homosexual!?" Why don't the movies just admit they're [....] mind control, written by apprentice flunkies who basically jerk-off the emotional susceptibility of innocent victims who paid money for maybe something more enlightening?
Barbie has the decidedly impertinent and socially devastating master stroke saved for when after tremendous wedding preparation, long distance coordination with the big city, hundreds of people, relatives, costumes, food, etc. (a large diamond of course, conspicuously selected in a macabre scene with jewelry store ghouls (...full staff after midnight on overtime...right...only the very best for princess)--night of the living dead materialists in their empty catacombs of display cases), she changes her flighty little mind in the nick of time, and before a well timed downpour that punctuates her contempt for the wedding and the wedding party. Rese Witherspoon needs these infant terrible outlets, her puckish and perky hypercriticality is what this [....] cesspool of a culture thrives on...or so it would be pawned off on us. You won't like this next paragraph, oh great ones, but never assume All the munchkins where you pop in to do your do-do (make films) are salivating and wringing their hands to come to greet you, kiss your shoes, or get your damn autograph.
Salt Lake City must be summoned, like the great unwashed suddenly up for review by some nether world superiors alighting, to appear as extras in the upcoming romp Legally Blonde II, (radio ads November 22, 2002 call for the comely and college aged, dark suited political types, and young children). Sounds like the mothership giving instruction for disembarking, all who remain behind are condemned. And don't you dare walk your walks where you live and cross paths with the film industry's eminent domain, the larger than life have minions of hounds carrying clipboards to accost all who stray into where the "magic is made", Ogden Utah's 25th Street and set for the tv drama 'Hardwood', or 'Viagrawood' or whatever its name was. The perception is: We are a needed, but despised adjunct to opulence, a rancid and rabble public chattel for them to cull and elect from our insignificance (they pretend to entertain and in fact constantly insult) one or two anointed surfs to stardom. Who wants to be the next American Idol? Or, `The One'. `..or thinks they can dance?'... `...or cook?' I think its now a rancid (mostly citrus) entertainment media too.
A simple country girl. June 22, 2006
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Sweet Home Alabama tries to be a cute and funny romantic comedy but just ends up falling a few centimeters short of brilliant. Reese Witherspoon plays Melanie, a fashion designer who resides in New York but now she must go back to the state she was born and raised, Alabama and must find her husband to get a divorce as soon as possible since her new boyfriend has proposed marriage to her, but unknown to him he doesn't know about Melanie's marriage to a good ole country boy back in sweet home Alabama. Her husband is played by the very hunky Josh Lucas and the soon to be finacee is played by Grey's Anatomy's Patrick Dempsey. This film has some sweet and tender moments and I think the orginal ending to the film was better but the director, Andy Tennant was told to change it because the ending was considered too depressing, Tennant explains in further detail in the special features section. Witherspoon can make any mediocre film seem better than it actually is, a so-so film, decide for yourself on this one.
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