New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
xx Beer for My Horses
75 Boy A
xx Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
48 Death Defying Acts
85 Edge of Heaven, The
33 Elite Squad
80 Encounters at the End of the World
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
54 Get Smart
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
34 Happening, The
25 Hell Ride
78 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
44 Henry Poole is Here
61 Incredible Hulk, The
65 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
57 Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
xx Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
73 Kung Fu Panda
52 Milarepa
62 Mister Foe
53 Mister Lonely
74 Mongol
61 On the Rumba River
83 Paranoid Park
32 Perfect Holiday, The
49 Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie, The
63 Planet B-Boy
72 Priceless
63 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
70 Standard Operating Procedure
35 Star Wars: The Clone Wars
57 Stone Angel, The
47 Strangers, The
61 Stuck
55 Sukiyaki Western Django
63 This Christmas
71 To the Limit
72 Transsiberian
71 Tropic Thunder
79 Visitor, The
93 WALL-E
37 War, Inc.
xx Whaledreamers
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
54 You Don't Mess with the Zohan
39 Young People F**king
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Sweet Home Alabama
Touchstone Pictures


7.3

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 53 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA 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)

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	C. Jay Cox Douglas J. Eboch (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Andy Tennant
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 4, 2003 Video: February 4, 2003 Theatrical: September 27, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	105 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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").

San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel

There's a certain formulaic and familiar quality about Sweet Home Alabama, but it doesn't matter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

If you're a fan of Witherspoon, this movie was produced, shot, edited and distributed entirely for you.

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.

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.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A good-natured but massively flawed little comedy.

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.

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).

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.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Isn't just lame; it's neutered.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Revives the format but not the fun of classic Hollywood screwball comedies about rediscovering the virtues of a former mate.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Goes south early and its director never comes close to turning things around.

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.

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.

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.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

A romantic comedy so rote, dull and predictable that it makes "You've Got Mail" seem innovative and fresh.

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.

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.

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.

Sweet Home Alabama Touchstone Pictures

Sweet Home Alabama
Touchstone Pictures