Crazy in Alabama

(Columbia TriStar)

Adapted from the '60s-set Mark Childress bestseller, Antonio Banderas's feature directing debut stars his wife, Melanie Griffith, as an Alabama mother of seven who offs her abusive husband with d-Con and heads off to Hollywood in the hope of starring on Bewitched. Meanwhile her orphaned nephew (Lucas Black) is living in a town that's being racked by the civil-rights movement -- and the film laboriously intercuts the two tales to make its clumsy points about freedom, guilt, and celebrity.