Reese Witherspoon continues her rise to romantic comedy leading lady status is this sweet, cute and utterly predictably romp.

Fashion designer and girl about town Melanie (Witherspoon) has the world of New York society at her feet. When the self-styled JFK Junior of New York (son of Mayor Candice Bergen) proposes, there’s a snag; she’s already married.

Going to her childhood hometown in the south (hence the film’s name), she has to confront her unfeasibly good-looking redneck husband (Josh Lucas) to get divorced. The usual crop of gags from a million other ‘fish out of water’ comedies follow in a laboured process (and remember, you have to act surprised) of her realising she still loves him, finishing up with the very Hollywood ending of her leaving the rich socialite to live with the backwater, wisecracking hunk.

If you saw the trailer at the movies earlier this year, you didn’t need to see the movie (in fact, the entire plot is given away in the tagline ‘Sometimes what You’re Looking For is Right Where You Left it’).

There’s a bunch of deleted scenes including an alternate ending, all introduced by director Andy Tennant (who takes it all a bit seriously — when the film itself isn’t worth introducing what importance can deleted scenes possibly have). The commentary by him is also pretty uninspiring but he’s fairly eloquent so if you aren’t a fan of the film but are of the filmmaking process, eager to vacuum up every bit of trivial information, there are worse commentaries around.

A music video from the soundtrack rounds off a DVD that’s neither the best nor worst it can be; definitely worth getting if you’re a fan however.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2003 at 12:00 am and is filed under DVD Reviews, Film, Xpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.