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Photo courtesy of Buena Vista
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By Lindsay Utz & Mark Betancourt
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday September 26, 2002
Utz: I thought "Sweet Home Alabama" was really cute.
Betancourt: Good for you.
Utz: Why do you always have to be so negative about everything? You always judge movies from your own pretentious view. Why don't you for once consider the intended audience, Mark? Girls are going to love this film!
Betancourt: What does that say about girls? You're implying that girls need mindless, sentimental music to come on before they can feel any emotion. Heaven knows they couldn't muster any feelings on their own. You're also implying that I think this movie sucked because I'm a guy and an enemy to sugar and spice and all things nice, and not because the movie actually sucked.
Utz: Why must you be indifferent to everything?! Don't lie and say that you didn't enjoy this movie. You were curled up in a ball biting your lip during the sappy love scenes.
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Mark Betancourt
GoWild Critic
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Betancourt: OK. I'm not going to respond to that. Let's just talk about the movie. It's about this girl Melanie from Alabama (Reese Witherspoon) who's made it as a big fashion designer in New York ·
Utz: · and she's engaged to the mayor's son who knows nothing of her redneck past. In fact, Melanie has lied to everyone in New York about her poor southern upbringing.
Betancourt: Yeah, which involves her childhood sweetheart (Josh Lucas), and when she returns to her childhood home to clear up some unfinished business with him, hilarity and mushiness ensue. Enter the age-old romantic comedy of a woman choosing between two equally good-looking men. Yes, that's right, it comes right down to the wire and she doesn't decide until the actual wedding where ÷
Utz: Don't ruin it!
Betancourt: What difference does it make? Either way, there's going to be a photo montage at the end with her and whichever guy she ends up with and their new baby, and everyone's going to go home happy, but thinking they've seen something with Julia Roberts in it.
Utz: Would it have made you happier if Reese decided to kill the man that she truly loves in the end?
Betancourt: Perhaps, Lindsay, then maybe the movie would have meant something.
Utz: Yes, that violence and hate are a whole lot easier than love and happiness.
Betancourt: What are you talking about? Can we focus here? This movie was obviously written either by a 12-year-old girl or by someone who thinks that love stories by 12-year-old girls are cute, which they're not. Twelve-year-old girls don't know anything about love, just fantasies about getting married to someone cute. That's what this movie is: cute. And that's bad.
Utz: What the hell is wrong with cute? You're one of those people that want to stab anything that is cute. You know what, who really cares what you think after all? This movie is light-hearted and fun. It doesn't ask anything from us, the audience, and we don't ask anything from it, the movie, except that it be playful and sweet · which it is.
Betancourt: Puppies are playful and sweet. Why don't you just hang out with one and save the eight bucks? Whatever happened to the uplifting experience of human contact through the sharing of imagination? Whatever happened to · oh forget it. The movie is exactly the same as every other romantic comedy. Go see it, see if I care.
Utz: I agree, it is just another romantic comedy. Yet the warm southern setting and funny hillbilly characters give this film more personality than others in its genre. The scenes in Alabama are beautiful, the southern plantations gorgeous. The down-home feel of the South makes for a great world where romance and comedy can play out.
Betancourt: Yeah, but it was all so underplayed. There was only one mullet in the whole movie, for one thing. The characters weren't ridiculous enough to live up to real life. They were the kind of clichŽs that would take any audience member a split second to recognize, meaning half the time you just kind of stop paying attention because there's nothing in the movie you haven't already laughed at a million times already. Yes, hicks say "ain't" instead of "isn't." Yes, gay people like men. If it was ever funny, it isn't anymore. The problem with this movie is that it lacks all originality or even talent on anyone's part. It's totally mediocre on all levels. Yeah, it may be entertaining. But it's drivel, and couldn't we be entertained by something better?
Utz: Maybe you should just go see "Stealing Harvard" instead.
Betancourt: Good one.
Utz: Actually, I hate this movie more than you do. I refuse to believe that love is anything but painful and sad. Happy endings are for hopeful people.
