Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
2/28/09
It
sure would be something to see a great movie every single week, or even
a really good one. But in lieu of that, particularly in the non-holiday
seasons when the studios tend to unleash films that fall somewhere between
“disaster” and “filler”, sometimes pleasantly OK will do. New
in Town, a modest romantic comedy that winks at easy-target contrasts
between Big City and Small Town and warm weather and icebox states, aims
no higher than the middle of cinematic achievement and doesn't even hit
all of those marks. But it's cute, fronted by an excellent couple
in Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr., and the kind of perfectly adequate
entertainment that'll go down easy in its' real home as a TV staple for
lazy, chilly Sunday afternoons.
Lucy
Hill (Renee Zellweger) is a hard-driven executive at a Miami corporation
looking to expand into a new kind of energy bar. They've got a Minnesota
factory that could be retrofitted to manufacture the bars (albeit with
a smaller workforce), and Lucy is assigned to take over the plant, supervise
the retrofit and decide who stays and who goes. When she arrives,
she's horrified by two things: arctic cold and townspeople who seem
to be auditioning for a road show production of Fargo. Her secretary,
scrapbooking, tapioca pudding-baking Blache Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan),
introduces her to the local union rep Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick Jr.)
and sparks fly. Soon enough, they're romantic sparks and she's finding
that New Ulm, MN isn't so bad after all. But how will her new friends
react when they learn Lucy's real agenda?
Even
though its' New Ulm (fun fact, that's a real town) and the people who live
there bear no resemblance to any small town I've ever been to, New in
Town will interest primarily those people who've spent all or part
of their lives living in the kind of area that would make big city folk
ask “Why?” Particularly if that area was COLD: I've lived in
Pennsylvania all my life and I still bristle at the horror of getting out
of bed on a frigid December morning, so the slapstick sequences built around
Lucy's struggle with the Minnesota winter were really a hoot. Zellweger
in general excels at slapstick and elevates even some shaky material.
Her overcranked reactions to the foibles of the New Ulm people are fun,
in part because no matter how much the movie disagrees, those folks are
a little weird. Only JK Simmons really makes his folksy character
come to life, although Siobhan Fallon Hogan does sell her Big Speech about
the wonder of folksy movie stock characters, er, ordinary people.
It's
telling that the movie wouldn't pair Lucy with one of those wonderful All-American
weirdos, instead having imported Connick Jr.'s character from North Carolina.
But while I've often had issues with him as a romantic lead, here he delivers
the goods. I really liked Ted's relationship with his daughter (Ferron
Guerreiro), who serves the useful purpose of giving he and Lucy something
to talk about other than just how much they “hate hate hate hate uh, kinda
love” each other. And while the movie can't help but make their first
meeting a judgmental shouting match, from there on they've got great chemistry.
The
plot is thin but effective, buoyed by the times in which New in Town
is being released. Who's not fantasizing that the cold-blooded market
forces putting us all on the brink of unemployment would instead be in
our corner if they just got to know us? The third act attempt to
save the factory is predictable as the day is long, but gets the job done.
I just wish the movie didn't feel the need to pack in one last semi-crisis
before the wrap-up. Gee, you don't think Lucy's gonna leave all this
behind and go home to Miami, do you?
New
in Town is cute, good for a few chuckles and will likely be quickly
forgotten by most everyone who sees it. I wasn't sorry I paid for
the privilege, but then, it was also really cold the night I went. |
