BY LARRY CARROLL | Trash or cash? That's the choice our heroine is forced to make in the uneventful yet improbably charming romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama. The movie should be a pleasant diversion for the core female demographic targeted by these films, but others will find it too heavy on the romance, and too light on the comedy.

Melanie (Reese Witherspoon, Legally Blonde) is a hip, up-and-coming fashion designer living in Manhattan. She's dating a JFK Jr. clone named Andrew (Patrick Dempsey, Scream 3) and, in a scene that will make girlfriends cry and boyfriends run for the exits, he proposes marriage to her in Tiffany's after hours. Andrew is the son of the Mayor of The Big Apple (Candice Bergen, Miss Congeniality) and a politico himself, so his romance with Melanie is fodder for the tabloids that needs to be carefully spun if the voters are to approve.

It would seem that Melanie has it all - beauty, fame, money, and an impending marriage to Prince Charming - but there's one last thing she needs to do before she can start flipping the pages on her fairy tale. So Melanie heads for Podunk, Alabama to track down Jake (Josh Lucas, A Beautiful Mind), the childhood friend who she married years ago in a moment of drunken abandonment, and ask for a divorce. Although at first Jake seems to want to part ways just as badly as Melanie, he keeps being elusive with the signature she needs to make the divorce paperwork complete. So, she has no choice but to stay in town until she can get his John Hancock.

This implausible but occasionally jocular set-up forces her to deal with the past and look up the family and friends she hasn't seen since she left them behind for the big city. It also forces her to get to know her husband a little bit better, and maybe fall in love with him for real this time. Unfortunately, what follows is a surprisingly humorless and unimaginative stretch of film that takes up the majority of its running time.

Alabama wants to force-feed us several hard to swallow plot points during this period. One of these is that Andrew stays in New York and barely bothers to monitor what the hell his betrothed is mysteriously doing down South. Another has everyone remembering Melanie and welcoming her back, although it is made painfully obvious that she treats these people like (to use their vernacular) a cow pie stuck to the bottom of her boot. The townspeople also repeatedly make references to Jake's new career, but one distraction after another keeps Melanie from asking what they're talking about.

Director Andy Tennant (Anna and the King) keeps throwing one cliched bit character after another at you, and some of them are good for a quick laugh. But, like a guy on a raft drinking salt water to quench his thirst, the desperate measure only briefly makes the problems go away. For supporting caricatures, Tennant insists on giving us the gay fashion designer best friend, the nice girl who got pregnant too early, the Barney Fife country bumpkin cop, and other similar golden oldies.

As far as main characters are concerned, the script likes to employ surprise as a substitute for development. The movie keeps leading us to believe a character is a certain way, only to suddenly pull back the curtain to reveal - voila! - their true selves. So, when somebody who has been nice for most of the movie lets loose with a surprising tirade aimed at the Southerners, we're supposed to cheer the resulting comeuppance. When Jake's career is finally uncovered, we're expected to think that he wasn't the right man before, but he might be now. And when Melanie makes her big decision at the end, we're supposed to fall in love with her and forget that she outed her gay friend, insulted half the town, cheated on her boyfriend, and appears to be so indecisive that any kind of long-term relationship would seem doomed to last any longer then the end credits.

But here's the kicker - somehow, Tennant manages to put together a soaring final half-hour that almost redeems the whole movie. It begins at the point when the Yankees start arriving in Alabama, and will keep you laughing steadily until the charming, good-hearted end. What this results in is one of those movies that make you walk out of the theater with a smile on your face and a spring in your step. Then, as you put your key into the ignition of your car a few minutes later, the thought hits you: "Wait a minute - that movie wasn't really that good."

I would have to attribute this strong final reel to the emergence of Fred Ward (Enough) as Melanie's "The South shall rise again!" dad. Relegated to the role of wallpaper for most of the film, he finally gets to step forward with some gags involving the re-creation of a Civil War battle, and it's the best part of the movie. The film also starts to capitalize on the "Fish Out of Water" theme by bringing Bergen's Mayor and Dempsey's Andrew down South. Up until this point, the movie should have been contrasting Reese Witherspoon (who plays uptight and spoiled better than anyone this side of Parker Posey) and her white-trash surroundings to mine more material than Don Rickles could in the lobby of a Jenny Craig. But Witherspoon's Melanie doesn't hold on to her New York ways nearly long enough; her regression is too immediate to create very many "Green Acres" moments, and that point is just accentuated when the Yankees arrive and begin the stream of jokes that should have been there earlier. Bergen flying up in a cranky old recliner or the locals making fun of Dempsey's fashions is good stuff, but it's too little too late.

I do have to give credit to the film, however, for refraining from the romantic comedy convention of revealing one guy as the "jerk" at the end of the movie. This is usually done to manipulate the audience into agreeing with the choice the female lead makes when faced with two men, and usually we find out that one of them is cheating on her, or dating her for her money, etc. Here, we get two men who are equally charming and suitable for the girl, and there is some genuine mystery as to which one she'll choose. It even takes the risk that you won't agree with the guy she chooses - I know I didn't.

The failure of Alabama isn't the fault of the actors, who all do commendable jobs with the roles they are assigned. Witherspoon is one of the finest young actresses working today, and it's unfortunate that she didn't find something more worthy of her efforts, but she still manages to inject enough perky enthusiasm to make the film a lot better then it could have been with a lesser lead. Witherspoon possesses the kind of comedic timing that just can't be taught, on display when she reacts to a dog diving into a lake and not coming up for air, or leads a supposed news reporter around a house pretending it's hers. It's just a shame they didn't put more moments of such levity in the film.

The actor who might gain the most from the film, however, is Lucas. With his good looks and disarming smile, the actor comes across as a Brad-Pitt type with more brains. Lucas has been in some great films before (Session 9, The Deep End, You Can Count on Me), but his contribution hasn't been as recognizable as it is here. The script calls for Jake to be hick, hooligan and hero all rolled into one, and the actor skillfully pulls it off.

Sweet Home Alabama could have been a lot of things. It has moments when it's romantic, when it's funny, when it makes good humor out of the things that still separates the North from the South, and when it shows a knack for good-natured, breezy fun. But it never harnesses any of this long enough to result in anything substantial. The lyrics to the old Skynyrd song may say that, "I miss Alabamy once again/And I think it's a sin", but to miss this Alabamy would probably be a good idea.

GRADE: C+