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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Sweet Home Alabama

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 53 votes
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by:
C. Jay Cox
Douglas J. Eboch (story)
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 27, 2002
DVD: February 4, 2003
Running Time: 105 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some language/sexual references
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Candice Bergen, Ethan Embry, Fred Ward, and Mary Kay Place
Bound and determined to end their contentious relationship once and for all, newly-engaged New Yorker Melanie (Witherspoon) sneaks back home to Alabama to confront her past (including her redneck husband), only to discover that you can take the girl out of the South, but you can never take the South out of the girl. (Touchstone Pictures)
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It is a fantasy, a sweet, light-hearted fairy tale with Reese Witherspoon at its center. She is as lovable as Doris Day would have been in this role (in fact, Doris Day was in this role, in "Please Don't Eat the Daisies").
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel
There's a certain formulaic and familiar quality about Sweet Home Alabama, but it doesn't matter.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
If Sweet Home Alabama, directed by Andy Tennant from a screenplay by C. Jay Cox, has the ingredients for a classic screwball comedy, the movie is in such a rush to entertain that it barely connects the dots of its story. But it still has its effectively goofy comic moments.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Die-hard fans of Witherspoon and the romantic comedy genre will probably find enough to like in this film to make it worth a trip to the theater. Everyone else would be best served by spending their hard-earned money on something else.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
If you can tolerate the redneck-versus-blueblood cliches that the film trades in, Sweet Home Alabama is diverting in the manner of Jeff Foxworthy's stand-up act.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
It's only when you're leaving the theater that her spell wears off and you realize just how bad the movie, directed by Andy Tennant, really is.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
If you're a fan of Witherspoon, this movie was produced, shot, edited and distributed entirely for you.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Makes a suitable staging post in Witherspoon's headlong career. She may want to forget it by Christmas, yet its cushioned slackness allows her to sharpen her grasp of a steely American type: the girl next door who will kill to get out of town. [30 Sept 2002, p. 145]
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
At the movie's thoroughly expected conclusion, a visual joke has a bedraggled cat licking at the icing on a wedding cake, but it's really Melanie who gets to have it and eat it, too.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Witherspoon shines. She's never looked better, and she carries herself with both her usual comedic flair and a surprising elegance.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan
Too sugary to be funny or offensive or even offensively funny, though any kind of funny would be welcome here.
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Trying to resist Reese is like trying to resist Reese's Pieces: They're always the same but you can't help yourself.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
This is the usual cartoon of hound dogs, roadhouses, antebellum mansions, and Civil War reenactments. Aside from that, it's not a bad date movie.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Fluff in the tradition of Hollywood's screwball comedies of remarriage, lacking the wit or grace of such classics as "His Girl Friday" (1940) and "The Awful Truth" (1937).
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Witherspoon has the class, the sass and the full-out talent to sustain a major career. Who else could turn the wimpy Sweet Home Alabama into a date-movie winner? She's one of that select group who is worth watching in anything. Even in this less-than-magic kingdom, Reese rules.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The whole dumb movie is a baloney cake, but the enticing icing on it is Reese Witherspoon, who manages to have a few moments of spontaneous fun in this half-baked store-bought comedy.
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Unbearable were Witherspoon not such a genuinely attractive performer.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
It doesn't have a speck of authentic heart -- you can bet its Hollywood creators wouldn't move to Alabama if their lives depended on it -- but if you belong to the growing legion of Witherspoon worshippers, this is definitely the movie of the week.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
The latest picture to give you the sense that Hollywood filmmakers simply plucked another old pop-tune title ripe for ripping off, then were shaken by the rude reality of coming up with a script to jerry-build around it.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Light to the point of disposability, Sweet Home Alabama is a small screwball comic idea that spins out far too long.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
What it needs is a little more dirtying down. What it needs, in short, is less New York, and more Alabama.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Laura Sinagra
The clunky yee-haw script full of tired bitch/angel oppositions and Witherspoon's school-play petulance cranks the twang to a blare.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
The film does coast along smoothly to the inevitable, which is a credit to the always-game Reese Witherspoon, who's courteous enough to pretend she doesn't know what's coming, then make it look like a huge surprise.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
The South takes another beating in Sweet Home Alabama, but that's nothing compared with the one conferred on the sweetheart personality of its pint-sized Gen. Sherman.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Revives the format but not the fun of classic Hollywood screwball comedies about rediscovering the virtues of a former mate.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
Goes south early and its director never comes close to turning things around.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
The film (directed by Andy Tennant) has more problems than Melanie, and they're insoluble. Its lazy calculation telegraphs each plot turn and underlines emotions with corn-pone music.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
And Witherspoon? She does the American equivalent of a mechanical British performance: She hits every note too perfectly. There's no shadow to her smile.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
This movie is phony, phony, phony -- from its Disneyland version of the Deep South to its pious lessons about the values of simple rural living.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
A romantic comedy so rote, dull and predictable that it makes "You've Got Mail" seem innovative and fresh.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Speaking of sounding Southern, I have to admit that the accents didn't match, and half the actors couldn't even do accents. But since we all sound alike down here, that's no big deal.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky
Which leaves Witherspoon, that delicious pastry, to heave the movie on her small shoulders and carry it home. The load is light -- the movie weighs no more than a glass of flat champagne -- but even she can't withstand the burden.
LA Weekly Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
To call the film contrived would imply that some sort of effort had been made, when Sweet Home Alabama is nothing but dead lazy and slow — y'all.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 53 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
A W gave it a4:
Predictable, cheesy, and lazy movie-making all the way. I don't hate chick flicks, either; with apologies to C.S. Lewis, "We don't need more chick flicks, we need better ones." For all the "Well, you yankees just don't understand the South" posters, Reese Witherspoon is the only really southern thing about this movie.
Ginny H. gave it a 10:
Great movie the south is gonna do it again.
Dede S. gave it a 10:
This was a great movie for anyone who believes in the fact that we all have a soul mate out there. Its a great movie, funny and tear-jerker at times. If you have any sense of style , like most southerners have you will love it. Yankee's cant' see the humor in it cause mose of them are stuff shirts.
Pat C. gave it a 1:
As romantic comedy, it charges out of the gate, sets a torrid pace, gets issues of obscene wealth vs. down home roots and feminist rights vs. domestic loyalty out there in the finest chicky-flicky tradition. It's working. It's working. I tell you, it's working. Anything the movie does after the putrid marriage proposal in Tiffanys is going to be well received. If what follows seems a little contrived, damn the torpedoes. We're going to get Closure. Yes! Yes! Civil war re-enactors do a battle, come back to life and sip lemonade (actually, that was a nice touch). There's an Out Of Africa tear-jerker of a plane ride. Oh, Wow! Wow! God, I say Wow! Full speed ahead! Then the glass & lightning rod thing resurfaces, we flashback to a dark beach where the Almighty irresponsibly neglects to smite somebody, and the film trips over its shoe laces and face plants at the finish line. Her guy isn't a redneck after all, he's a snag (sensitive new age guy). It's just a little too much to have to walk on eggshells to continue the charade of an unrepentent pathological liar avoiding superficial social embarrassment . A hush falls over us. We agree it was a hell of a ride, but we won't remember a thing about it the next day. They painted ourselves into a corner with the title song. Maybe it's too hokey - it would never had gone anthem if Neil Young hadn't pissed off the locals. Hey Jeff, how about, "You know you're a redneck if you hated this movie."
Arianna gave it a 10:
I loved this movie....Reese is such a delight to watch!! Its a great flick!!!
Tommy P. gave it an 8:
Great movie.....dont listen to the stupid critics ..."they hate themselves"
Paul D. gave it a 5:
Unbelievable fairy tale, made bearable by Reese Witherspoon's sincere performance, is acceptable as an innocuous rental.
