Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A girl who fled the countryside to make something out of herself in New York City has to return home to clear up some skeletons in the closet before getting married.
Stars: Reese Witherspoon * Patrick Dempsey * Fred Ward * Candice Bergen * Josh Lucas
Review: Overblown hyperbolic caricatures surround the three main cast members - Dempsey, Witherspoon, and Lucas. Witherspoon - a capable actress given the right script and cast (Fear and Legally Blonde are perhaps her best roles, imo) - is given little to play off in Dempsey's character, leading the audience to know from the start which way her heart leads. It doesn't help that her skeleton - a husband she left some seven years ago in what can only be an allusion to 'The Seven Year Itch' as the time difference played no realistic role in their relationship - is a husband who was also her childhood sweetheart.
Lucas plays the country-born jilted ex-lover to a great degree, but literally has no chemistry with Witherspoon. Dempsey - the fiancee - does little besides act as a cause for Witherspoon's bickering with Lucas.
Add in stereotypes: the gay country lad who hides his secret but then is outed by one of his supposed 'best friends' during a drunken tizzy; the bar/pool scene with Sweet Home Alabama by Skynyrd in the background; the fat man with a supposedly comic mullet; the childhood friend who's now the local sheriff; the big-city mayor with a secret bias against country-folk; the old faithful hound dog who died while the main character was gone and his replacement; the husband's got a secret passion that's moving him beyond his country roots; the father with a penchant for Civil War re-enactments; the giving mother who dreamed of bigger things for her daughter than being stuck in BFE.... there are more.
It's like the writers just grabbed different items that sounded good, threw them in a blender and hit frappe'.
Overall: Bad
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