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and, of course, getting engaged to the wealthy darling of a powerful political family.

Wait, you married a Kennedy?

Nimue:

That line always kills me. I come from a place where it's perfectly acceptable to bring little kids into bars (presumably because otherwise they'd never get to spend any quality time with their parents) and it always freaks out the tourists.

Haven't seen this movie, but I guess I have to now. Especially since I have started getting teary-eyed during songs about tractors during these last few years in Scotland. I didn't even LIKE country music when I left, but now it makes me homesick for sunshine and lemonade and driving by a corn field in the evening with the windows down. Mmm.

Kansas, I miss you.

Hello Admin? Yeah, it's me Paddy. Retract that apology ASAP. I'm coming up there to help you rain down bloody hell on these people.

Hey, Dustin said it. Not us. Take it out on him.
But please keep it confined to Portland, if you don't mind -- I don't wish for my vacation spot in Rockland to be taken out as collateral damage.

I was never interested in this movie to begin with. It was during the Rise of Reese Period where she, Like Jude Law, was in EVERY DAMN MOVIE.

Sorry Rowles, nothing for this. Back to the Satellite of Love. Tom, Crow, Mike, Joel and I are drinking.

Ahhh Dustin,
For the record, I grew up 15 minutes from that "crappy one strip town", you loathe so much. And there is something about this movie that does strike a chord with one born and bred in Dixie. There are, believe it or not some things that are just universal when it comes to the Southern thang. This movie is one of my guilty pleasures (shhh...don't tell my Nation of Islam relatives....don't need a fatwa comin' my way)

Yeah, Chuckfilm.

Because that's all the South is about.

Or the Civil War for that matter.

I was born and raised in Georgia, went to college in Texas, and now I live in Appalachia. And there's a lot I regret about my fellow southerners - the ignorance, the knee-jerk conservatism, the obesity... but goddamn it I love the south. It's sort of like a snot-nosed kid brother - I can abuse him all day long, but you say one word about him, and I will lay you out.

I will always have a special fondness for movies that manage to get the accents and the culture right. Show the ugly, show the poignant, show the transcendent - just show it real.

And don't be putting sugar in the motherfucking grits. What is wrong with you, boy?

I grew up in Jonesboro, and I know exactly the feeling you mean, Dustin. I had to leave the South to be at peace with it (although Facebook is endangering that a little.)

Shit, yeah. I like this movie. Born and raised in Arkansas, although Eureka Springs is hardly typical Arkansas experience.

Now I want some dumplings.

Well I heard Mr. Young sing about her
Well I heard ol' Neil put her down
Well at least Neil Young would remember
to have a sober flight crew check things out

Sweet Home Alabama
where the skies are so blue
(and the plane's out of fuel)
Sweet Home Ala-WHat Now?
AIGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Watch their plane go Ka-boom!

You did not just now dis Neil Young. No way.

No no no no no no. No.

I'm telling Neil Young on you.

That look RW is giving in the picture -- that can't be faked by Heigl or Aniston, because they lack the unguarded self-possession to pull it off. It's a look many a Southern boy is familiar with, and it's caused no small amount of pain!

I am not from the South, though I've spent a fair amount of time there. I like this movie more than I should, and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one around here with this guilty pleasure. The thing I like best about it is that the guy she doesn't choose isn't an asshole. If she'd opted to go with him, I would have been fine with it. Most rom coms are set up as a binary. It's not a huge innovation, but it was strangely satisfying to still like the guy who didn't get the girl.

True story: (hand to god)

At home on a visit when this was still in theaters, it was my mom's turn to pick a movie one weekend.
She picked this.

8 years later we still haven't forgiven her.

I've lived in this state for a number of years. Now I live very close to the place you despise. I avoid the entire county like the plague. That place isn't normal. I grew up near the Missouri state line, the home of rice fields and giant ass buzzard style mosquitoes. Phillip, I can tell you Jonesboro is slowly allowing the liquor in. It's fantastic really. Not that I've been back for any number of years, but my family still lives nearby.

I like the south. We own our history instead of trying to run from it. You'll find some racism everywhere, but using it as a point to demean an entire portion of this nation is just flat the hell out bullshit. Chuckfilm, maybe you should get out and explore the world instead of trying to incite something with that much of close-minded statement.

Sweet Home Alabama is a damned terrible movie, but I'll openly admit to loving it. Resse's accent doesn't make me want to punch her, so that's very impressive. I can't stand a fake southern accent. The only thing worse is a bad Louisiana/Cajun accent. The baby in the bar thing never seemed that odd to me. I used to go in the local bar every Thursday to get my BBQ sandwich from Mr. Bob. I did that when I far, far too young to be in a bar. Damned smoking laws have ended all that here.

I've always had a soft spot for this movie, too. But then, I love Witherspoon.

Weird, I've been thinking about this movie lately. I am not from the South, but I do like it. Ethan Embry was great in it.

Honestly, this rom com wasn't bad. It was bad but it didn't make me cringe and hate myself for watching it.

"I grew up in north Alabama back in the 1970s, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Speaking of course of the three great Alabama icons: George Wallace, Bear Bryant and Ronnie Van Zant. Now Ronnie Van Zant wasn't from Alabama, he was from Florida, and he was a huge Neil Young fan. But in the tradition of Merle Haggard writing 'Okie From Muskogee' to tell his dad's point of view about the hippies and Vietnam, Ronnie felt that the other side of the story should be told. And Neil Young always claimed that 'Sweet Home Alabama' was one of his favorite songs, and legend has it that he was an honorary pallbearer at Ronnie's funeral. Such is the duality of the Southern Thing."

-- Patterson Hood

comma is damn right. I always considered Arkansas and Texas the west. I grew up around people like a family friend who said that so and so's daughter was marrying a man "from up north."

He meant Tennessee. There's the South, and then there's the Deep South. I live in NYC now, and my friends make fun of me for actually using the word "Yankee" to mean "Northerner." I never knew that was weird until I moved up here.

Seventh-generation Texan here (yep, before it was a state) and lived in both Georgia and Alabama as an adult. Gave birth to a Georgia peach. Then brought her back to Texas. I've only ever lived in the South.

And I can't stand this movie.

Give me Urban Cowboy, Coal Miner's Daughter, Places in the Heart, movies like that any day over this one. Yes, I know they have their cheesy factors, too.

I'm from the South, but not the deep south (although I live in the Mid-Atlantic now) and I have to say that we include Arkansas when talking about the South. Oklahoma, not so much, but Arkansas definitely. West Virginia is never included, but Kentucky can be. Maryland is absolutely not included and Virginia is included, but only south of Fredericksburg, VA.

I like Sweet Home Alabama like I like a rainy fall day. Every now and again it's really lazy and nice to have around.

ERM - Technically, Maryland is the south, as determined by the Mason-Dixon line. That being said, how "Southern" Maryland is, really depends on where you are in the state. Central Maryland, you know, the DC-Baltimore corridor, (which has now spread a bit west, probably pulling in Frederick, thanks to that insiduous suburban sprawl), where the majority of the population is, that is not the South. But Western Maryland, Southern Maryland, and the Eastern Shore? Those definitely have a Southern feel.

I am from the central part, and I am not Southern in the least. But my first cousin once removed, who now lives in West Virginia, born and raised in Western Maryland? She said to my mother, "Bonnie, you've got a couple of Yankees!" when the subject came up that my sister and I live in Massachusetts.

So there ya go.

Oh, and I am quite fond of this movie. Happy to watch it when it comes on the TV. But I'm a sucker for rom-coms anyway.

@ Tamatha

He just doesn't want to except that New Jersey is in his region. Who would?

Well their dead so no one cares.

"This is the nature of "the southern thing" and it separates us from most northerners who, much like yourself i imagine, like to pretend their older generations didn't own slaves and that they currently don't have people every bit as racist and bigoted living up there as we do down here (see: Park51 Islamic Community Center)."

Okay, I will concede that the north has quite a bit of racism. That being said, I do think the South has a bit more reason to own their racial history in that: 1. White Southerners are often very proud of having longstanding roots in the region, roots which confirm, at some level, their family's direct participation in or complicity in slaveholding. Many of us white Northerners haven't been in this country nearly long enough to have had slaveholders in their personal history, so accusing us of ignoring a personal slaveholding history is a bit anachronistic; 2. slavery was abolished in the North decades before the Emancipation Proclamation; 3. the South, not the North, had state-supported segregation until well into the '60s, when the region was dragged kicking and screaming into the civil rights era. The North also has no history of lynching to speak of. Yes, the North has its problems, but you couldn't get arrested here for sitting in the front of a bus if you were black.

This is not to favor the North over the South or set up some elitist hierarchy, but it grates on me when Southerners gloss over legitimate historical differences between the regions.

Im from the deep deep south, Australia. I have spent some time in the American south, a few months in Atlanta among other places(argue about it if you want). The movie I think that is a better film and better portrayal of the the south albeit tongue in cheeks is Talladega nights.

@Carrie,

Saying the Civil War had very little to do with slavery is like saying you actually have a good grasp of reality.

There were five major reasons for the Civil War and all were directly or indirectly impacted by slavery, to say otherwise is revisionist nonsense.

1. Economic and social differences between the North and the South.

2. States versus federal rights.

3. The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State Proponents.

4. Growth of the Abolition Movement.

5. The election of Abraham Lincoln.

I will throw in a sixth reason: preservation of the Union. And yes the victors do get to write the history, the Confederate states had their asses handed to them, so deal.