Home Sweet Home 2 Ending Explained

[Glendora Spink]

Atthe end, the film tries to have it both ways, by having the high school sweetheart create a business that he can then move to New York and join Reese, holding true to their past but moving forward together into the future. But I find it interesting that they were unable to carry out their dreams in their hometown. They had to move someplace new, using a new context to create a new identity, as Reese did in her initial move to New York, and as she got her husband to do later in the movie. Even in a movie where New York is portrayed as a shallow glitzy sort of place, it is still an environment of change.

I find it interesting that the rest of the country despises liberal bastions like San Francisco and New York, and yet celebrates American ideals like innovation and competition, which are best exemplified by those bastions. Conservatives tend to despise the Old World of Europe for holding on to the past, and yet idealize small-town culture (or the stereotypical Southern culture portrayed in Sweet Home Alabama) which is stagnant and unchanging.

About me: I'm an unrepentant generalist finding my way in a world of specialists. I started this blog to review books, but I later expanded to write on whatever interested me across a range of topics. I am also an executive coach, helping leaders become more effective by creating clarity and acting with focus. You can learn more about my coaching at Too Many Trees, or by checking out what I share on LinkedIn around leadership and personal development. email me if you have any questions or comments.

Sweet Home Alabama is a 2002 American romantic film directed by Andy Tennant. Written by C. Jay Cox, it stars Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey. The supporting cast includes Fred Ward, Mary Kay Place, Jean Smart, Candice Bergen, Ethan Embry, and Melanie Lynskey. It was released in the United States on September 27, 2002, by Buena Vista Pictures. The film takes its title from the 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd song of the same name. It received mixed critical reception,[2] but was a success at the box office.[1]

In the present day, Melanie is a successful New York fashion designer who has adopted the surname "Carmichael" to hide her poor Southern roots. After wealthy Andrew Hennings proposes, Melanie returns to Alabama to announce her engagement to her parents and finalize a divorce from her husband Jake, whom she married as a pregnant teenager and left after she miscarried their baby. Meanwhile, Kate Hennings, Andrew's mother and the Mayor of New York City, doubts Melanie's suitability to wed her son, whom she is grooming to run for President of the United States.

Melanie visits Jake, who has repeatedly refused to sign divorce papers over the years since she left for New York. After he orders her out of his house, Melanie empties Jake's checking account, hoping to spur him into ending the marriage. Angry, Jake leaves to meet some friends at a local bar without signing the papers. Melanie follows and gets drunk, insults her old school friends, and outs her longtime friend, Bobby Ray. Jake scolds her and takes her home, preventing her from driving drunk, and Melanie wakes to find the signed divorce papers on her bed.

Melanie goes to the Carmichael plantation and apologizes to Bobby Ray, whose family lives there. She is cornered there by Kate's assistant, sent to gather information on Melanie's background and posing as a reporter for the New York Post. Bobby Ray backs up her pretense that she is a relative and the family mansion is her childhood home. Melanie reconciles with her friends and learns that after she split with Jake, he had followed her to New York to win her back. Intimidated by the city and her success, he returned home to make something of himself first. She and Jake have a heart-to-heart, and Melanie realizes why he never signed their divorce papers.

Andrew arrives to surprise Melanie, but upon learning her true background and that she never told him she was married, he angrily leaves. He later returns, saying he still wants to marry her, and the wedding is immediately set in motion. Melanie's New York friends arrive for the event. While visiting a nearby restaurant/resort with a glassblowing gallery, they admire the glass sculptures that are similar to ones they have seen in New York. Melanie realizes Jake is the artist and that he owns the resort.

During Melanie and Andrew's wedding at the Carmichael estate, a lawyer arrives and halts the ceremony. He has the divorce papers, which Melanie hadn't signed. Melanie confesses that she still loves Jake and cancels the wedding. She and Andrew wish each other well, though Kate berates Andrew and insults Melanie, her family, and the entire town, for which Melanie punches her in the face. Melanie finds Jake at the beach planting lightning rods in the sand during a rainstorm to create more glass sculptures. She tells him they are still married, they return to what would have been Melanie and Andrew's reception, and finally, have their first dance as husband and wife.

A mid-credits sequence shows that they have a baby daughter, Melanie continues to thrive as a designer, and Jake opens a "Deep South Glass" franchise in New York. Andrew is engaged to a girl named Erin Vanderbilt.

Although centered in a fictional version of the town of Pigeon Creek, near a fictional version of Greenville, Alabama, the film was mostly shot in Georgia. The Carmichael Plantation, which Melanie tells the reporter is her childhood home, is the Oak Hill Berry Museum, a historic landmark in Georgia which is near the campus of Berry College in Rome, Georgia.

The streets and storefronts of Crawfordville, Georgia, were used as the backdrop for the Catfish Festival and other downtown scenes. The coonhound cemetery was on Moore Street in Crawfordville and the bar was located at Heavy's Barbecue near the town. Glass that forms when lightning hits sand, as in the film, is called fulgurite.

Jake's glassblowing shop was filmed at an old mill named Starr's Mill, in Fayette County, Georgia. Wynn's Pond in Sharpsburg, Georgia, is the location where Jake lands his plane. The historic homes shown at Melanie's return to Pigeon Creek were shot in Eufaula, Alabama.

Roger Ebert, critic for the Chicago Sun Times, awarded it three-out-of-four stars, commenting, "It is a fantasy, a sweet, light-hearted fairy tale with Reese Witherspoon at its center. She is as lovable as Doris Day would have been in this role... So I enjoyed Witherspoon and the local color, but I am so very tired of the underlying premise."[5] Andrew Sarris, critic for the New York Observer, said that the movie "Would be an unendurable viewing experience for this ultra-provincial New Yorker if 26-year-old Reese Witherspoon were not on hand to inject her pure fantasy character, Melanie Carmichael, with a massive infusion of old-fashioned Hollywood magic."[6]

The film grossed over US$35 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office, beating The Tuxedo and Barbershop.[7] At the time, it had the highest September opening weekend, surpassing Rush Hour.[8] For a decade, the film would hold this record until 2012 when Hotel Transylvania took it.[9] Despite getting dethroned by Red Dragon, it still made $21.3 million during its second weekend.[10] By the end of its run in the United States, Sweet Home Alabama grossed over US$130 million, and another US$53,399,006 internationally. With a reported budget of US$30 million, it was a box office hit, despite the mixed reviews.[1]

Sweet Home Alabama was released on VHS and DVD on February 4, 2003. It sold 2 million DVD copies on its first day of release,[11] and sold 7.40 million copies earning a profit of over 128.7 million dollars.[12]

Family is more important than possessions or places. Home is where the heart is. Home is just another word for family. One character complains her family makes her "anxious, furious, and insane," but she has to spend Christmas with them.

Pam and Jeff are loving parents and kind people who are pushed to the edge of reason by their financial circumstances. Max defends himself with violence, but really he's just a kid who misses his parents.

Characters are White, Asian, and Black. A boy teases a man about playing with dolls. The boy later tries on a dress. Parents speak to their young child occasionally in very basic Spanish because they're "teaching him Spanish." One family just moved to town from London. A family goes to the Catholic Church to celebrate Christmas. They're collecting gifts for needy kids at the church.

A kid sets up a "battle plan" to attack two adults who are trying to break into his home. They're after a doll, but he thinks they want to kidnap him and imagines the worst. His elaborate, painful traps involve heavy flying objects, fires, explosions, and pushpin-bearing darts. The two adults slip repeatedly on ice, sink into a covered pool, fall off a stone wall, walk on Lego bricks, run into things, are nearly impaled by falling objects, drive their car into a pole, and lose a tooth.

Parents need to know that, like its predecessors in the franchise, Home Sweet Home Alone has a lot of comic violence. A couple (Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney) are trying to retrieve a valuable doll they believe is inside the home of a young boy named Max (Archie Yates), who thinks the pair want to kidnap him because his vacationing family accidentally left him behind. To fend them off, Max sets up a series of traps that involve heavy flying objects, fires, explosions, and pushpin-bearing darts. The two adults slip repeatedly on ice, sink into a covered pool, fall off a stone wall, walk on Lego bricks, run into things, are nearly impaled by falling objects, drive their car into a pole, and lose a tooth. The beatings are played for laughs, but the motivation for the couple's desperation is financial hardship due to unemployment, and their economic problems are contrasted against other people's wealth in the film. Both they and Max ultimately learn that family is more important than possessions or places and that home is just another word for family. Secondary characters are Black and Asian. Language includes a use of "bulls--t" that's left unfinished, plus "crap," "stupid," "butt," "cretin," "idiot," "flabby," "booby," "heinie," "monster," and some bathroom humor. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.

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