Here is Reese Witherspoon's breakthrough movie, the property that's set to push her into the Julia Roberts big league - but what a disappointment after the fizz of Legally Blonde and the astringency of Alexander Payne's high school masterpiece Election. It's a high-ish concept comedy, directed by Andy Tennant (of Anna and the King and Ever After), and it has Witherspoon as Melanie Carmichael, a beautiful fashion designer in Manhattan - with all its brittle, superficial values. Her southern twang is almost buried under the veneer of sophistication and she's engaged to a JFK Jr type, whose mother, played by Candice Bergen, is mayor of New York.

The problem is that Melanie's already married to a childhood sweetheart from her home town of Greenville, Alabama, so she has to wrinkle up her high-falutin' nose and go back there to get a divorce from the redneck dope, naturally discovering the values of home and family along the way.

It's all very predictable and there's a notably diluted, sanitised Alabama shown on screen: Lynyrd Skynyrd's classic track is adopted as the unofficial state anthem, as opposed to Dixie, of which we get just a few coy bars on the soundtrack; the confederate flag is glimpsed subliminally in a picturesque Civil War re-enactment and on a few tasteful cushion designs - and Melanie's gay black mentor gets a warm welcome. Witherspoon herself looks like the regulation million bucks, but her redemptive mental journey from big-city hotshot to southern gal isn't very convincing, and everything is smothered in saccharine.