... the first being a rather original piece of Southern Gothic - oppressed wife and mother of seven children poisons and decapitates husband in order to free herself to become a star in Hollywood, and the second a by-the-numbers Civil Rights tract. The first movie is completely daffy and charming, and the second is... just there. Although the Civil Rights angle is fairly well-acted, it's everything you've seen in at least 20 other movies -- it's like the Lucille story is the candy and this part is the medicine. As Lucille, Melanie Griffith is sooo adorable (which is quite a surprise for anyone who finds her babydoll voice more irritating than nails on a blackboard) and as for the others who appear here, it's just pleasure upon pleasure: the seldom-seen, ever-brittle Cathy Moriarity as Lucille's sister-in-law, Fannie Flagg as a sympathetic and much-married diner waitress, Robert Wagner as Lucille's Hollywood agent, Rod Steiger as the judge at Lucille's murder trial, and on and on. If the filmmakers had just stuck to making the Lucille story, this might have been a classic.
Review of Crazy in Alabama
