At the Movies - 'Sweet Home Alabama'

The Associated Press

"Sweet Home Alabama" is so wildly uneven, it should have been called "Sweet and Sour Home Alabama."

For every moment that rings true, there are 10 others that clang in a broad, sitcommy way.

For every scene that allows the reliable supporting actors to spring to life, there are others in which they're relegated to serving as two-dimensional types.

And for every time the eminently likable Reese Witherspoon overcomes the sappy dialogue and predictable twists, far more often she gets mired in mediocrity.

Witherspoon proved last year in "Legally Blonde" that she could take potentially cringeworthy dialogue and make it tolerable. Here, there's no hope for hammy lines about giving away your heart a long time ago and finding your soul mate at age 10.

Although she's become America's sweetheart - and she is undeniably cute and charming - Witherspoon is actually stronger here when she's asked to be ugly.

She may have been annoying as the interminably perky Tracy Flick in "Election," but there was a vulnerability underneath.

Here, as up-and-coming New York fashion designer Melanie Carmichael, she's just flat-out selfish and materialistic.

Melanie has just staged her first runway show to rave reviews, and gotten engaged to one of the city's biggest catches, Andrew Hennings (Patrick Dempsey), who surprised her by proposing after hours at Tiffany's and letting her pick whichever ring her pretty little heart desired.

But before she can marry him, she must go back home to Alabama and divorce her redneck husband, Jake (Josh Lucas), whom she abandoned for the big city seven years ago.

In New York, Melanie has presented herself as a Southern debutante who was raised on a plantation. When she returns to Pigeon Creek, Ala., we learn the truth: She grew up in a doublewide trailer, the child of blue-collar parents Earl and Pearl (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place).

Director Andy Tennant ("Anna and the King") never misses an opportunity to depict the folks in Melanie's hometown as quaint, small-town hicks - which automatically makes them better than the people in New York, because "Sweet Home Alabama" is one of those movies, like "Doc Hollywood," in which small town equals good and big city equals bad.

This is best exemplified by Andrew's mother, Kate (Candice Bergen), the politically ambitious New York mayor, though it's practically the same role as the conniving pageant director she played in "Miss Congeniality."

Kate never approved of Melanie as a match for her son, who was clearly modeled after JFK Jr., down to the thick wavy hair and classic, understated wardrobe. (Dempsey, not surprisingly, played a young John F. Kennedy Sr. in a 1993 miniseries.) But ever the Democrat, she insists upon learning of Melanie's past: "There's nothing wrong with poor people. I get elected by poor people."

For some reason, Jake has refused to sign the divorce papers - though why he wants to hang onto the marriage is the biggest mystery of C. Jay Cox's porous script. And that's a problem, since it's the movie's premise.

The paperwork snag keeps Melanie in town longer than she anticipated, and - guess what? - she gets her twang back, learns to appreciate the catfish festival, and finds that maybe she still has a soft spot for that beer-drinking lug after all.

Melanie and Jake have a couple of convincing fights, and a scene in which she gets drunk and tells off her old friends in a honky-tonk is believable. (Another in which she visits the grave of her dead dog, Bear, and apologizes for being absent in his final years will tug at the hearts of dog people in the audience; I'll admit, it got to me.)

But the changes of heart happen too quickly and things wrap up far too neatly for any of those real moments to matter.

"Sweet Home Alabama," a Touchstone Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for some language and sexual references. Running time: 109 minutes. Two stars out of four.