September 27, 2002 (United States)
Sweet Home Alabama is a 2002 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Andy Tennant. Written by C. Jay Cox, it stars Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey. The supporting cast includes Fred Ward, Mary Kay Place, Jean Smart, Candice Bergen, Ethan Embry, and Melanie Lynskey. It was released in the United States on September 27, 2002, by Buena Vista Pictures through their Touchstone Pictures banner. The film takes its title from the 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd song of the same name. It received unfavorable critical reception, but was a success at the box office.
Storyline
On a beach in Pigeon Creek, Alabama, 10-year-olds Jake Perry and Melanie Smooter inspect the result of lightning striking sand. Jake asserts that they will be married one day.
In the present, Melanie is a New York fashion designer who has adopted the surname "Carmichael" to hide her poor Southern roots. After wealthy Andrew Hennings proposes, Melanie returns to her hometown to Pigeon Creek, Alabama, to announce her engagement to her parents Earl and Pearl Smooter and to finalize her divorce from her estranged husband Jake, whom she married as a pregnant teenager and left after she miscarried their baby. Meanwhile, Kate Hennings, Andrew's mother and current Mayor of New York City, doubts Melanie's suitability to wed her son, whom she is grooming to run for President of the United States.
Melanie visits Jake, who has refused to sign divorce papers over the years since she left for New York. After he orders her out of the house, Melanie empties Jake's checking account, hoping to spur him into ending the marriage. Angry, Jake leaves to meet some friends at the local bar. Melanie follows and gets drunk, insults her old school friends, and outs her longtime friend, Bobby Ray. Jake scolds her and takes her home, preventing her from driving drunk, and Melanie wakes to find the signed divorce papers on her bed.
Melanie goes to the Carmichael plantation and apologizes to Bobby Ray, whose family lives there. She is cornered there by Kate's assistant Barry Lowenstein, who is sent to gather information on Melanie's background, posing as a reporter for the New York Post. Bobby Ray backs up her pretense that she is a relative and the family mansion is her childhood home. Melanie reconciles with her friends and learns that after she split with Jake, he followed her to New York to win her back. Intimidated by the city and her success, he returned home to make something of himself first. She and Jake have a heart-to-heart, and Melanie realizes why he never signed their divorce papers.
Andrew arrives to surprise Melanie, but upon discovering her true background and that she is married, he angrily leaves. He later returns, saying he still wants to marry her, and the wedding is set into motion. Melanie's New York friends arrive. While visiting a restaurant/resort with a glassblowing gallery, they admire its glass sculptures. Melanie realizes that Jake is the artist and owns the resort.
During Melanie and Andrew's wedding at the Carmichael estate, Wallace Buford, Melanie's attorney, halts the ceremony. He has the divorce papers, which Melanie hadn't signed. As Melanie is about to sign the papers, she realizes that her love for Jake is still there. She tells Andrew that she gave her heart to Jake and never got it back. She and Andrew wish each other well; Kate then berates Melanie and her mother, for which Melanie punches Kate. Before running off to find Jake, she tells everyone who is friends and family of the bride to stick around.
Melanie finds Jake at the beach planting lightning rods in the sand to create more glass sculptures. She tells him they are still married, and they return to what would have been Melanie and Andrew's wedding reception, where they have their first dance as husband and wife.
A mid-credits sequence shows that they have a baby daughter, Melanie continues to thrive as a designer, and Jake opens a "Deep South Glass" franchise in New York. Andrew is engaged to a girl named Erin Vanderbilt.
Sound Effects Used
- Hollywoodedge, Baby Coo PE143901
- Hollywoodedge, Baby Crying Slowly PE144001 (Heard once in a low volume.)
- Sound Ideas, TELEPHONE, ELECTRONIC - ELECTRONIC 2: RINGING, OFFICE