New in Town

This is one of my favorite movies. If you are from the midwest or have visited someone in the midwest especially in the winter you will find this movie funny. I am from California and married someone from northern Michigan so I can relate to Renee's character in the movie as she is from Florida. I have had several trips to Michigan/midwest and discovered a totally different type of living than what I have experienced in Los Angeles. I laughed and found it very heart warming.

2.5 stars. The title of my review pays homage to several influences that came to mind while watching "New in Town", all of which, I might add, were funnier than this. Multifaceted Oscar winner Renee Zellweger has finally encountered a role she can't pull off convincingly, that of a ruthlessly ambitious corporate management type tasked with turning around an underperforming factory. 'Fish out of Water' stereotypes abound as our plucky gal travels from Miami to New Ulm, MN (Winnipeg stands in for Minnesota here, and is even colder, if that is possible), to earn herself a promotion by making the factory profitable. As her entire wardrobe consists of designer suits and shoes more fitting of a fashion editor covering the Bryant Park shows than to a hard hat zone in Minnesota in the middle of winter, her new subordinates are doubtful that this will be achieved. As are we. Of course, the script demands that everyone, including the hunky union boss (Harry Connick, Jr.) take an instant dislike to the stuck-up big city suit intent on screwing them out of a job, until, of course, she reveals her pluckiness and charm and they win her over with tapioca and down-home Midwestern gumption. Renee Zellweger has proven that there is no other actress more willing to take physical pratfalls and otherwise look ridiculous as she, and she pratfalls her little heart out as she falls sideways in the snow; falls facedown in the snow; falls backwards off the porch into snow while drunk; gets her car stuck in the snow; and memorably tries to take a pee in the woods while wearing about 75 pounds of snowsuit. She works her little heart out to bring the funny, but the script lets her down and just never gels into a cohesive whole. Some of the supporting players are effortlessly hilarious, most notably Siobhan Fallon Hogan as Blanche Gunderson, who is certainly related to Frances McDormand's Sheriff Marge Gunderson of "Fargo", and J.K. Simmons (Spiderman; The Closer), nearly unrecognizable under a 10-pound beard and even heavier Minnesota accent. The leads unfortunately can't save this from being a freeze-dried piece of Rom-Com Screenwriting 101 complete with Midwestern sterotypes. Even if the good people of Minnesota have no other hobbies besides ice fishing, scrapbooking and eating tapioca (which I'm sure they do), this is insulting all the same. Matthau and Lemmon did this better, and had loads more chemistry, too. It's kinda a shame that so many cast and crew members braved frostbite for this frozen dud. But the Academy might consider minting a new award and making Renee its shoo-in first recipient: Best Performance in Stiletto Heels on Snow Pack by a Lead Actress. Really--she deserves some kind of recognition for that.

There is a quiet fireside scene between stars Renée Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr. on a couch about midway through this 2009 rom-com. It lasts a couple of minutes, and that is one of the very few redeemable qualities that this otherwise flat and predictable film has to offer. It's no wonder that this movie came and went very quickly in theaters because I'm really amazed at how poorly constructed it is by Danish director Jonas Elmer and how overly reliant it is on cutesy humor and dated stereotypes. I thought Zellweger already went down the path of the smug career woman with her unctuous turn as a Doris Day wannabe in Peyton Reed's retro-kitschy Down with Love, but it looks like she is going down the well once again with even less fortuitous results this time. She plays Lucy Hill, a cutthroat middle management executive on the fast track in a Miami-based food processing conglomerate. Sent to the arctic-level cold of New Ulm, Minnesota, Lucy has been assigned to dismantle and downsize operations in order to produce a new snack bar line.

Tough as nails with the high heels to match, Lucy is unsurprisingly hated by most of the townsfolk with two exceptions. One is her devoted secretary, Blanche Gunderson, who has a secret tapioca recipe that figures into the by-the-numbers plot, and the other is Ted Mitchell, the local union representative who pushes Lucy off her self-anointed pedestal only to find himself falling in love with her. The film's first half is marked by all the typical fish-out-of-water clichés that co-screenwriters Kenneth Rance and C. Jay Cox could resuscitate, or at least copy from Charles Shyer's Baby Boom (1987), while the second half is even worse with Lucy inevitably winning the trust of the townsfolk with her fierce determination redirected in saving the plant. The means by which she finds success for the factory is almost as predictable as the makeover montage showing how she transforms Ted's adolescent daughter into a prom princess. Attempts at Capra-level corn seem not only uninspired but completely unoriginal, and the aw-shucks stereotypes of rural Minnesotans lifted from the Coen Brothers' Fargo only add to the contrivances pervasive throughout the plot.

Photographed in a most unflattering manner, Zellweger has rarely been this unappealing onscreen, and it's a wonder why she would have accepted a role as soul-curdling as Lucy. Connick comes across as either belligerent or listless as Ted, and the chemistry between the actors suffers for the dichotomy. As kind-hearted Blanche, Siobhan Fallon Hogan (the birthing coach in Baby Mama) is never given a chance to elevate the character above a regional stereotype, while J.K. Simmons (the wiseacre father in Juno) manages to score a few points as the plant's curmudgeonly foreman. Interestingly, Winnipeg, Manitoba substitutes for rural Minnesota, and credit cinematographer Chris Seager for fully capturing the rigorous winter conditions. Given how dismal the movie's box office returns were, the 2009 DVD provides a surprisingly robust set of extras with a making-of featurette as well as a couple of other shorts spotlighting some of the plot devices like scrapbooking and tapioca pudding. There are some deleted scenes and an optional commentary track with the cast and crew.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 109 reviews  3.6 out of 5 stars