This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
No Place Like It
Plot Overview
Pigeon Creek, Alabama, pop. 3564, sees ten-year-olds Melanie Smooter
(Dakota Fanning) & Jake Perry (Thomas Curtis) get struck by lightning
while playing kissy-face in a thunderstorm. They talked silly
about marriage. Kids! The town's name, however, presages where
as adults they'll end up one day sans paddle. The smoocher grew into
the town's most infamous JD
“Felony Melanie,” getting into trouble at stockyard,
fishpond and bank. Jake played high school football. The
night of a big win Melanie was “the first girl to climb into
the back of your truck.” She fell pregnant.
They summarily got hitched. That would pretty much define a small
town girl's future, except she had a miscarriage and with “too
much to live for” left for New York. There going by Melanie
Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon) she befriends Tabatha
“Tabby” Wadmore-Smith (Rhona Mitra) a picky number who
is unlikely to ever find a guy suited to her tastes. She introduces
Melanie to gay, black fashion designer Frederick Montana who takes
her under his wing and mentors her (“She is his
protégé”) in clothing design. At a New Year's
Eve party further down the line, she meets her prince charming, Andrew
Hennings (Patrick Dempsey) who in a case of “classic rebound”
from his high society ex, mistakes her for a debutante, dates her
for all of eight months, and proposes dramatically. She is already in a
head-spin over her fashion show success and way too tired to think clearly.
She accepts but with serious unspoken reservations. It's like a bit from a
James Patterson novel if one were to switch the sexes:
In a strained voice Mattie said, “We had a whirlwind romance shortly after you hired me. We were engaged in six months. But I eventually found out that Chris was a troubled man, Jack. There was a part of him that I could not know. He never talked about his childhood. But there was something from that time that haunted him. The longer I was with him, the more I could feel how large a space it occupied in his soul. I pleaded with him to tell me, but he refused. Finally I decided I couldn't marry a man with so much unknown inside him, no matter how much I loved him. It wouldn't be fair—” (95–6)
It is a faux engagement as she's still
married to Jake (Josh Lucas) back in Alabama, Jake refuses to sign
the papers, and a contested divorce would take 18 months—too
long. She moves in as a hostile wife in order to manipulate him. During
the ensuing marriage war, the town sheriff arrests her, her
redneck friends try to take up with her as before, her doting
parents do their best to sort it all out, lover-boy Andrew pays a
surprise visit, his mom Kate Hennings (Candice Bergen) who's Mayor
of New York has a cow, and the press show up to interview Melanie
at her supposed plantation—not her real homestead a
double-wide. Somebody hand that girl a paddle.
Ideology
The not unexpected romance that rekindles
between the son & daughter of the south is so off the wall as
to be preposterous were it not for the movie world preparing
us for it. Think along the lines of, (Prov. 30:18-19) “There be three
things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:
The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock;
the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with
a maid.” The ancient writer of this saying cannot track an eagle
drifting on the air currents, or a slithering serpent on a rock, or
a ship tossed on the waves, much less “the way of a man with
a maid.”
The air show in this movie consists of a
couple Civil War buffs reenacting the IED's placed in the path of advancing Yankees, blowing
chunks of metal sky high, and who knows where they'll all land.
The serpentine motion of a
tormented cat scurrying down the street is the stuff of legend.
The water scene of a hound dog playing fetch with a weighted object in a pond of unknown depth leaves us biting our nails waiting for it to surface.
Production Values
“”
(2002) was directed by Andy Tennant. The screenplay was by C. Jay
Cox based on a Douglas J. Eboch story. It stars Reese Witherspoon,
Patrick Dempsey and Josh Lucas. Witherspoon shone with her usual
effervescent screen presence, this time with a southern accent
creeping in towards the end. The other actors played their parts well, if
conservatively, so as not to upstage the comedic genius of the script.
MPA rated it PG–13 for some language/sexual references.
It had a good soundtrack and direction, beautiful scenery and
good cinematography. Earl and Pearl the protagonist's parents
were a study in harmonizing opposing views on their daughter's
future. The southerners had turned their military defeat into a moral
issue played with dignity. The victorious north engendered a successful
black whom one wouldn't expand his chest over, while the coloreds of the
south seemed to know their place and get along. The Democrat mother was
played straight allowing the audience to make up their own minds. It was
filmed on location in Eufaula, Alabama, USA. Runtime is 1¾ hours. They wisely got
rid of the original, irksome ending.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
These
honkies did not wear their religion on their sleeves, but their speech
mentioned God and his ways, while the Yankees not so much. There
was a Bible-toting minister to officiate at the wedding, whichever
way it went. The opposing grooms got along better than did the women.
Friendships from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line were enduring.
The lawyer was harried and the cat had an encore. It had a happy ending.
I liked it and recommend it.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Patterson, James and Mark Sullivan. Private Berlin. Copyright © 2013 by James Patterson. New York: Grand Central PublishingTM, 2013. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org