You may’t take the honky-tonk out of the lady! Candy House Alabama turned a basic rom-com virtually as quickly because it hit theaters in 2002, due to the attraction — and chemistry — of leads Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas.

“Small-town lady strikes to the massive metropolis and forgets her roots” is a plot so clichéd at this level that it exhibits up in about 90 p.c of made-for-TV Christmas films, however in Candy House Alabama, it simply works. Witherspoon stars as Melanie Smooter, a New York Metropolis clothier who hides her Pigeon Creek, Alabama, origins by utilizing the final title “Carmichael.”

That plan appears to be understanding for her till she will get engaged to Andrew Hennings (Patrick Dempsey), the rich son of NYC’s mayor (Candice Bergen). The issue is that she’s already married — to Jake Perry (Lucas), the childhood sweetheart who was presupposed to have divorced her years in the past however by no means signed the papers. The one answer is to return to Pigeon Creek and get the divorce finalized, however as a result of this can be a romantic comedy, that’s not how issues between Melanie and Jake play out.

The film is a fantasy, in fact, however Witherspoon has mentioned that Melanie’s struggles truly mirror a few of her personal experiences as a Louisiana-born, Tennessee-raised actress making an attempt to make it in Hollywood.

“Once I learn the script I used to be like, ‘Do these folks know my life story?’” she mentioned throughout a City Corridor occasion in 2018. “As a result of irrespective of how a lot you like the place you’re from, whenever you get slightly bit older, you get nostalgic for it. Once I was 18, I used to be like, ‘I’m out of right here! I’m by no means coming again!’”

The Oscar winner clearly had a change of coronary heart, as she now shares a house in Nashville along with her husband, Jim Toth. “Once I was going by Candy House Alabama, I used to be like, ‘That is precisely how so many younger folks really feel. You need to depart dwelling and then you definately understand that there’s so many vital issues concerning the closeness of household or individuals who knew you earlier than,’” she recalled in 2018. “And I really feel actually like that film actually encapsulated these concepts. And it was a number of enjoyable. It was a lot enjoyable. I had a good time doing it.”

Maintain scrolling to see what the forged of Candy House Alabama has been as much as for the reason that film premiered in 2002: