Buy it... if five minutes of pretty, sentimental highlights for orchestra and acoustic guitar from George Fenton are enough to justify an otherwise rowdy and inconsistent blast of bluegrass and comedy spirit.

Avoid it... if you have no interest in hearing the British composer take a wild stab at humorous bluegrass outbursts, despite his success in producing several truly wild cues that perhaps unintentionally poke fun at the culture of America's Deep South.

Fenton

Sweet Home Alabama: (George Fenton) The surprise romantic comedy hit of 2002's autumn season was Sweet Home Alabama, a Reese Witherspoon vehicle that was blasted by critics for its unoriginal script but managed to stir up huge business at the box office thanks to forgiving female audiences. In the plot, Witherspoon plays a New York fashion designer engaged to the son of the city's mayor (Candice Bergen in a limited role), but her life is complicated by the fact that she skipped out on her marriage to her childhood friend back home in Alabama. When her husband refuses to sign divorce papers, she returns to her old community and runs through the normal comedic circles expected for a film of this sorts. As one might imagine, everyone in the Alabama setting is simply wonderful, including the husband, eventually exposing Witherspoon's lead as the screw-up in this equation. Through the help of her old friends and some nasty behavior by her New York connections, the woman rediscovers everything about her heritage that is truly special and there's the obligatory "happily ever after" moment. For you, the success of Sweet Home Alabama will depend first on how well you can identify with Witherspoon in the lead role and secondly on how (un)believable it is that Alabama is a great place. Director Andy Tennant has helmed several silly and ridiculous comedies of this sort, many of which financial successes, and for the original scores in these productions, he has often turned to British composer George Fenton. Usually contending with numerous song placements in these assignments is Fenton, whose best work for Tennant, Anna and the King, is not surprisingly devoid of such troubles. In Sweet Home Alabama, the composer had the troublesome task of connecting scenes in between these high profile placements, led, of course, by the use of the famous 1970's song "Sweet Home Alabama" (this time performed by Jewel). To his credit, though, the Brit did stir up a genuine sense of comedic bluegrass spirit for this score, traversing an extremely wide variety of genres on the journey through America's Deep South and the usual romantic shades of contemporary and traditional sounds common to these films. Like the movie, Fenton's score hits all the right notes and utilizes all the proper instrumental colors, but in the end, it's about as anonymous as one could imagine. Despite Fenton's success in achieving all his goals in this circumstance, the score-only album featuring this work is a laborious challenge.

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Like the song compilation album for the Sweet Home Alabama soundtrack, the score covers a lot of stylistic territory during its journey. It opens with an extremely affable, bluegrass and orchestral rendition of Fenton's main theme in "Lightning Strikes," introducing the acoustic guitars, electric bass, harmonica, and percussion that will define much of the Southern personality throughout the score. Immediately following, a metropolitan New York setting is afforded keyboarded pop tones in "Tiffany's" before "North/South" adds electric guitar and Hammond organ to the bluegrass tone, infusing a fair amount of retro jazz into the mix as well. Most importantly, this shift represents the switch towards the comedy realm in Sweet Home Alabama, with several subsequent cues pushing the tone of the Southern personality to silly proportions. Softer acoustic guitar expressions of the primary theme are the highlights of the middle portion of the score, "Jake and Mel" about as easy as it gets for a listening experience. Mixed throughout this score, even in the majority of wild material for the locale, is an orchestral presence that foreshadows the romantic conflicts to come later in the film. As the clashes between characters and cultures approach their necessary conclusion, Fenton slowly shifts the score back to the normal orchestral romanticism one would expect for this topic. This transition is confirmed in the lengthy "The Coon Dog Cemetary," which drops all pizzazz but subtle guitar contributions and uses soft woodwind and plucked string renditions of the main theme to convey the sincerity of the scene. The orchestra prances into straight comedy mode in "The Same Melanie," which uses a funny, bluesy clash between the classical and bluegrass tones in affable rhythms. In "Andrew Wins Her Back" and "The Glass Factory," peachy sentimentality is heard from woodwinds over wafting strings, the slight slurring of progressions the reminder of the score's previous incarnation. The "You Owe Me a Dance" cue is a solid representative of the entire work's maturation, starting with a downright rowdy 40 seconds of rock attitude before returning to the gentler contemporary feel of "Jake and Mel." The cue eventually swells into the score's only full-blooded orchestral statement of the main theme, complete with a return to the tingling percussion hinted at the very start of the film. Together, the impression that this score leaves is what you would find when melding parochial Thomas Newman spirit and Rachel Portman sappiness. In the end, "Jake and Mel" and the majority of "You Owe Me a Dance" will combine for five minutes of very attractive material for your Fenton compilations, but those highlights cannot redeem an otherwise disjointed listening experience over the rest of the album. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For George Fenton reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.64 (in 14 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.47 (in 15,812 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.