THURSDAY,SEPTEMBER 26,2002
FILM
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN - 7
ra
re
'Sweet Home Alabama' hits sour note
FILM SNOB
James Owen
jowen@kansan.com
Sweet Home Alabama tells the story of Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon), a Southern girl who has made it big in the fashion world of New York City. She has also made it big with Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), the prominent son of the mayor. Candice Bergen plays his mother, Kate, in full Hillary Rodham Clinton mode, including the ambitious pant suits. Andrew proposes marriage but there is one hitch: Melanie is still married to Jake (Josh Lucas), her husband back home in Alabama.
So, she goes back to her home town of Greenville, Ala., to get him to sign the divorce papers. As Hollywood likes to do, it portrays this small town as a third-world country where everyone just happens to suffer from a terminal case of quirky politeness.
Melanie acts as though it is a foreign world when she arrives, despite having lived there for almost 20 years. But she finds it hard to turn down the charm of knowing everyone's name. She also finds it hard to turn down Jake. He was her first love and they did spend the beginning of the movie watching lightning turn sand into glass. It must be destiny. But faster
than one can say Hee-Haw, Kate knows something is up and tries to employ her evil Yankee attitude in ruining the whole thing.
There are points that baffle me in Sweet Home Alabama, but that's the case for me with every romantic comedy. Melanie acts as though Greenville is a place she's never been, despite recognizing a couple of faces. I can understand being apprehensive, but is really a ploy to make that character cartoonish than she needs to be. I think the audience would have accepted as more guarded, but then that would have been as easy for the script to mine laughs.
She's quick to leave once she gets there, but then she makes a royal boob out of herself at a local honky-tonk bar, which infuses enough guilt into the character to cause an about-face.
She realizes she still loves Jake, though it's difficult to understand why. He is not as perfect as Andrew, who has a great career, good looks and covers Melanie's apartment with flowers. His only flaw is having a shrew caricature of a mother. Jake is the guy who knocked her up in high school and has a personality that totally clashes with her nature. The movie always explains the reason for their relationship as fate, so there is no need for self-accountability. I suppose that is why this formula keeps getting cranked out and people keep buying tickets to see it.
The film does hit its target occasionally. I enjoyed the scene when Melanie has to look for her father (Fred Ward) in a field full of re-enactors playing dead Civil War soldiers. The scene where Melanie and Jake actually have a frank conversation about how their relationship had ended is good as well. All of that feels like an accident because the rest of the film just mails the results in. Why not when the ending is an inevitable conclusion?
This movie wastes the talent of Witherspoon and Lucas, who was much more convincing in his similar role in You Can Count on Me. But if easy love and denial is
Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) returns home to divorce her husband, Jake, played by Josh Lucas, but falls in love with him all over again in 'Sweet Home Alabama.'
your deal, grab a bag of popcorn and check out Sweet Home Alabama.
'Sweet Home Alabama'
Starring Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas
Rated PG-13 for language and sexual references
Opens Friday at Southwind 12,3433 Iowa St.
'Sisters' doesn't give bang for viewers' bucks
FILM
I know I probably don't fit into the audience The Banger Sisters had intended. However, I am a connoisseur of romantic comedies and can enjoy a "girlie" movie with the best of them.
Peter Black
pblack@kansan.com
But watching Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon prance around in trashy outfits, exchanging trite, drug-induced, pseudo-intellectual lines of conversation that are supposed to add insight into how to enjoy life was almost enough to make me walk out of a movie for the first time in my life.
I sat it out.
Yet I left thinking that I had possibly seen the worst movie of my life.
The movie is set in the streets of downtown Los Angeles, lined with band fliers and gritty biker bars. It is in one of these Whiskey-A-Go-Go establishments that Suzette, played by Hawn, carelessly tends bar. Her insouciant attitude soon gets her canned and longing for the days when life was uncomplicated, not that it is now.
Suzette travels to Phoenix to try to catch up with an old friend, Vinny, played by Sarandon. Vinny was a groupie, but is now
living in upscale Phoenix married to a lawyer.
On the trip to Phoenix, Suzette picks up Harry, played by Geoffrey Rush, a washedup, obsessive-compulsive screenwriter toting an old typewriter and a pistol — with one bullet intended for his father.
After what seems to be hours of dull conversation, the two arrive at their destination. Suzette finds Vinny, who now goes by Lavinia, but is turned away because she has yet to grow up. Suzette eventually shows Lavinia that life isn't about doing what everyone else wants you to do. It is about being true to yourself, but, honestly, who really cares?
The Banger Sisters starts out slow and
gets only slower. There are painful sequences between Suzette and Harry that seem to drag on forever. Before you know it, Lavinia has changed back into Vinny. Then the movie is over without any explanation of how her family came to accept her independence.
The filmmakers assembled an all-star cast of Academy Award-winning actors, with the exception of Hawn. Unfortunately, they take part in a movie comprised of predictable scene after predictable scene. I still can't figure out why Rush's character was there. He is one of the main actors, but plays absolutely no role in the overall plot, other than providing slapstick comedy scenes such as falling over an ironing board. Sarandon playing a groupie must have been an attempt by her to rekindle her Thelma and Louise days of rebellion.
I would like to see studios at least attempt to make quality films, rather than bang out movies like The Banger Sisters packed with glamorous stars with glam-
wool over the viewers' eyes while the studios steal our money.
Sarandon and Hawn in 'The Banger Sisters.'
'The Banger Sisters' 1/2 (out of four)
Starring Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon and Geoffery Rush
Rated R for language, sexual content and some drug use
Playing at Southwind 12, 3433 Iowa St.
orous awards, used shamelessly to pull the