Film Review: When Harry met Renée -- who cares?
How desperate is "New in Town," the new so-called romantic so-called comedy with Renée Zellweger?
So desperate that at one point it tries to get the party started with a wacky tapioca-fight montage scored to a peppy country song called "Life Is Good" by one Brittini Black, from her album, Good Happens.
Rated PG for language and some suggestive material
Length: 96 minutes
Released: January 30, 2009 NationwideScore: 2.0
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr., J.K. Simmons, Frances Conroy, Siobhan Fallon Hogan
Director: Jonas ElmerProducer: Paul Brooks, Darryl Taja, Tracey Edmonds, Peter Safran
Writer: Ken Rance, C. Jay Cox
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Distributor: Lionsgate Films
Photos by Rebecca Sandulak/Lionsgate
Harry Connick Jr. and Renée Zellweger have little to work with other than tapioca in "New in Town."
You betcha: Renée Zellweger and Siobhan Fallon Hogan in a scene from "New in Town."
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Goodness! Party people in the house, throw your hands in the air, and wave 'em like you just don't care. Or, sit down and wait a few months,
and catch "New in Town" in heavy rotation on the Lifetime Channel.
At least the Brittini Black song makes sense in the just-plain-folks-just- plain-know-how-to-have-fun context of the story. But why oh why does the 1973 glam-rock classic "20th Century Boy" blare on the soundtrack when Zellweger is driving across a frozen pond? Because one of the movie's producers got stoned to T. Rex during college and hasn't gotten over the experience?
Utterly predictable if occasionally inexplicable, "New in Town" casts Zellweger as Lucy Hill, an ambitious Miami corporate climber sent to manage a factory in the tiny, frozen town of New Ulm, Minn., where she is supposed to introduce "mechanization and modernization" -- and "terminate" half the workers.
You'll never believe what happens next (spoiler alert!): Lucy encounters a series of eccentric but lovable townspeople whose folk wisdom, sense of community and funny Frances McDormand- in-"Fargo" accents shame her hard-boiled citified pragmatism.
And get this: She finds romance with the unlikeliest of candidates -- the hunky, widowed union rep (Harry Connick Jr.), who drives a pickup truck, listens to country music and likes beer! Pretty soon, she's not "new in town" at all, but baking cakes and helping the union rep's teenage daughter pick out a dress for the Valentine's Day dance.
In other words, the lesson here is: City, bad; small town, good. Sophisticates: bad; scrapbookers: good. Vegeterianism: bad; meatloaf: good.
Judging by the evidence onscreen, we might even say: White Christians: good; others: wellllll, maybe not bad -- but who needs 'em?
It's sort of odd in the age of Obama to find a feel-good movie that hardly bothers to include a single black face, even a movie set in rural Minnesota. At the same time, "New in Town" flirts with the idea of being a faith-based film, but never quite commits.
In one scene, the townsfolk, candles in hand, gather around an outdoor Christmas tree to sing about Jesus; at the end of the performance, I kind of expected them to lead Lucy off to a large wicker man. The movie's pandering is kind of creepy, but give Lionsgate -- the canniest of film distributors -- credit for trying to capture a large demographic that's churchy yet not quite ready to join hands with saved African-Americans at screenings of the company's Tyler Perry movies.
Of course, one reason people go to the movies is to find comfort in the ritualized reenactment of happy-ever-after stories; in that regard, strict adherence to formula can be an attraction. (One of the film's scripters is C. Jay Cox, who wrote this movie once before, when it was called "Sweet Home Alabama" and starred Reese Witherspoon.) What sinks "New in Town" isn't its tired premise or even the distasteful (given the current recession) simplistic phoniness of its depiction of the labor/corporate struggle. What kills the film is the insipid script (the movie is only a few minutes old before its clichéd Minnesotans utter the words "Vikings," "knockwurst" and "glockenspiel") and the flat direction of Jonas Elmer, a Dane making his English-language feature- film debut.
The cast does what it can with the uninspiring material. Less squinchy- faced than usual, Zellweger displays a relative restraint that several people at a recent preview screening attributed not to a change in acting philosophy but to an excess of Botox. More entertaining than the star are the always wonderful J.K. Simmons, as a gruff factory foreman, and Siobhan Fallon Hogan as kindhearted busybody Blanche Gunderson, whose surname is probably a nod to detective Marge Gunderson in "Fargo."
-- John Beifuss: 529-2394
Comments » 1
tigergrrl writes:
As much as I love Reese Witherspoon, "Sweet Home Alabama" was so full of southern stereotypes it was embarrassing. Seriously? A Coon Dog Cemetery? I get the feeling this one is going to do the same thing with small-town northerners. Not to mention all the pratfalls Renee can encounter wearing high-heeled pumps in the snow. Oh ho ho ho! Hilarity ensures, I'm sure.
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