A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Sweet Home Alabama

Date Viewed: 11/2/02

Details:

Reese Witherspoon

Josh Lucas

Patrick Dempsey

Candice Bergen

Mary Kay Place

Fred Ward

Director: Andy Tennant

Score: 1/2

The Review: This romantic comedy drags a little in the middle, but works well at both ends. Witherspoon is an up and coming NYC-based fashion designer with several curious secrets buried in her home-town past in Pigeon Creek, Alabama. Dempsey is the mayor's son with whom she falls in love. But things get much more interesting when she returns home to think over the changes in her life, and reconnect with the remnants of her past that refuse to go away -- including a husband (Lucas) who has apparently refused to divorce her.

Candice Bergen is great as the mayor of New York: manipulative, scheming, devious. And Dempsey is an excellent Matthew McConaughey (and JFK Jr) look-alike. But the truly fun characters are those portraying Witherspoon's parents, including Fred Ward (doing a creditable Walter Matthau imitation) as a Civil War re-enactor.

By the way (you'll understand this later), the term actually is fulgurite -- the fused, ramified casting formed by lightning when it courses through moist sand. Rare, and truly fascinating.

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