The Tuxedo is probably Jackie Chan's least enjoyable action-comedy in a decade, and no doubt some will place the blame on the shoulders of uber-perky Jennifer Love Hewitt. ![]() Everyone I know loves Reese Witherspoon, but she'd better be careful in choosing her leading roles, because like Sandra Bullock before her, she could easily turn Triumphing in Subpar Material into a full-time career, and we might all lose interest. As Lucas' urban opposite, Dempsey has moments, though his decision to play the role as quasi-gay is a head-scratcher, but can there be any doubt that the movie would collapse without Miss Witherspoon? She's spectacularly assured and polished, but as with Legally Blonde, there's also a whiff of her knowing she's better than the film she's stuck in. Playing the locals, Mary Kay Place, Fred Ward, Jean Smart, and particularly Ethan Embry are charming, and Josh Lucas is the film's real find, delivering a true Star Turn after terrific supporting performances in such works as American Psycho and A Beautiful Mind. Thank God for the cast, though all of them deserve better than Sweet Home Alabama. The jokes are beyond-dopey - not a lot of cleverness here - and the film is another in Tinseltown's endless line of works showing that if you're wealthy and successful and living in a big city, you're a fraud, and unhappy to boot it's Hollywood's veiled way of telling audiences that, poor and unfulfilled though they might be, they're much better off than the phony stars who appear in their films, and the condescension is breathtaking. Based on the applause that greeted Sweet Home Alabama's finale at the screening I attended, I guess one out of three ain't bad. ![]() In romantic comedies, we ask only that the movie in question provides a good cast, a modicum of cleverness, and that it doesn't insult us. The correct response to each of these questions is "duh," but predictability is one of the not-so-guilty pleasures of the Hollywood romantic comedy the giddy thrill involved with watching two fictional characters get together when you really want them to can't be denied. Will Melanie and her estranged spouse (Josh Lucas) initially battle, then come to realize they still have Deep Feelings for one another? Will Melanie find herself embarrassed by her Alabaman friends and family yet grow to adore their quirks? Will Melanie have to choose between the two loves of her life on the day of her wedding? Will we be given a primer on how the heartlessness of The Big City, embodied here by a tightly wound Candice Bergen as the NYC mayor, doesn't hold a candle to folksy, small-town values? The only thing standing between Melanie and Happily Ever After is her past, which includes the husband she abandoned in her rural Alabama hometown. In this fish-out-of-water comedy, she plays the hip, New York-based fashion designer Melanie Carmichael, whose politico boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey) has just proposed. Just how much goodwill are audiences willing to extend to Reese Witherspoon? Quite a lot, actually, if their response to Sweet Home Alabama is any indication.
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