Sweet Home Alabama

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Candice Bergen, Fred Ward

Cert: PG12.

Though this soppy film has had a massive Stateside opening, local audiences might find it too sweet.

Witherspoon is, it has to be said, easy on the eye, but she has been lumbered with a storyline that gives her little scope to shine as she deserves.

Here, she plays a big-city fashion designer who has just got engaged to one of New York's most eligible and wealthy gentlemen … only she has a little back-home business to sort out first. Like getting rid of a redneck husband back home in Alabama.

Also, she has been telling the rich folk in the Big Apple that her folks are also knee-deep in money - well, they're not, they're white trash!

What's a girl to do?

Find, for one thing, a more witty, more observant screenplay that doesn't send up instead of sympathise with its Deep South characters.

Star Rating: 3/5