… So, I liked Witherspoon and the local color, but I am so very tired of the underlying premise. She is as adorable as Doris Day would have been in this role.
Roger Ebert, a critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, made a very positive analysis by giving it 3 out of 4 stars commenting “It’s a fantasy, a sweet fairy tale with Reese Witherspoon at its center. On Rotten Tomatoes, 38 percent of critics gave positive reviews of the film, based on 157 reviews. This film received mostly mixed reviews from critics. The historic houses shown on Melanie’s return to Pigeon Creek were shot in Eufaula, Alabama. Wynn’s Pond in Sharpsburg is where Jake lands his plane. Jake’s glass shop was filmed at an old mill, called Starr’s Mill, in Fayette County. Glass that forms when lightning strikes the sand, as in the film, is called fulgurite. The cemetery was on Moore Street in Crawfordville, and the bar was located at Heavy’s Barbecue, close to town.
The streets and shop windows of Crawfordville, Georgia were used as a backdrop for the Catfish Festival and other downtown scenes. It was also the first film allowed to be shot at Tiffany & Co. Sweet Home Alabama was the first film authorized to shoot in New York after the Septemattacks. The Carmichael Plantation, which Melanie tells the reporter that it is her childhood home, is the Oak Hill & The Martha Berry Museum, a Georgia landmark that sits on the Berry College campus in Rome, Georgia. Īlthough centered in the fictional city of Pigeon Creek, near a fictional version of Greenville, Alabama, the film was shot primarily in Georgia. They had previously acted as best friends on Can’t Buy Me Love. This was the second film in which Patrick Dempsey and Courtney Gains starred. Reese Witherspoon was invited to star in Sweet Home Alabama the same weekend that Legally Blonde debuted.
She accepts the request, but needs to return to Alabama as soon as possible to get a divorce from her current husband. Everything is going well in Melanie’s life, until Andrew decides to ask her to marry him. There she meets Andrew ( Patrick Dempsey ), son of current mayor Kate Hennings ( Candice Bergen ), with whom she begins dating. ĭetermined to run away from Jake ( Josh Lucas ), her husband, Melanie ( Reese Witherspoon ) leaves Alabama and goes to live secretly in New York.
The title of the film and the lyrics to the theme song are from the song ” Sweet Home Alabama ” by southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, which first appeared in 1974 on their second album, Second Helping. The film was released by Touchstone Pictures. Sweet Home Alabama ( Brazil : Sweet Home / Portugal : The Diva Fashion ) is a film American of 2002, the genre romantic comedy directed by Andy Tennant, starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey and Candice Bergen.