Zellweger comedy 'New in Town' pleasant but predictable
"New in Town" is one of those shallow, by-the-numbers, feel-good comic romances that climaxes with the main man and woman sharing a celebratory kiss, prompting people around them to break into spontaneous applause, as if they have been watching the movie along with us and magically realize it's a special moment.
This romance is also one of those obvious, fish-out-of-water comedies where people from the big city are depicted as heartless, conscience-challenged corporate robots, and rural folks might be simple, but they possess the truly important gifts in life such as dignity, a sense of community and Jesus on their side.
By the closing credits, "New in Town" reveals itself to be a little more than all that - it becomes a silly but timely wish-fulfillment fantasy about how America's small businesses can adapt and thrive in crippling economic times.
Renee Zellweger plays Lucy Hill, the only woman on the board of a Miami-based food processing company and one of the stupidest people ever to travel. Assigned to temporarily take charge of a company-owned Minnesota manufacturing plant - and lay off 50 percent of its work force - Lucy heads to Fargoland without checking the weather reports. She never even packs a coat.
The only thing frostier than the Minnesota winter turns out to be the employees' reaction to Lucy and her highfalutin' big city manners and condescending vocabulary words like "prioritizing."
Lucy's bubbling, personable secretary Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon) tries to make her new boss feel at home. She offers meatloaf, her secret-recipe tapioca and advice on making scrapbooks. Blanche also asks Lucy to dinner. Blanche thinks she's doing Lucy a favor by inviting Ted Mitchell (a bewhiskered Harry Connick Jr.), a handsome local widower.
When Lucy and Ted lock horns in a war of cultural stereotypes, she has no problem telling Ted what she thinks of him.
If only she'd known he's the union rep for half the workers in Minnesota, and all the workers at her plant.
Just when "New in Town" should have died of embarrassment for being so formulaic and predictable, the characters suddenly begin to mesh a bit, and the story's heart grows two sizes larger. That's still not as big as it needs to be to compensate for the relative lifelessness of this movie, directed by Danish filmmaker Jonas Elmer, whose last feature, "Nynne," was characterized as a "Danish Bridget Jones."
Little wonder why he was hired for this project, insomuch as Zellweger played Jones in two features.
The supporting actors - among them J.K. Simmons as the irascible plant manager Stu and Ferron Guerreiro as Ted's lady-in-waiting teenage daughter Bobbie - simply will their characters into spontaneity. For a while.
The turning point occurs during a blizzard when a late-night car accident nearly kills Lucy on a deserted road. In his pickup truck, Ted finds her car in a snowy ditch where Lucy has been drinking alcohol and passes out.
"You're not so bad when you're unconscious," Ted says.
And his movie's not so bad. If we're unconscious.
'New in Town'
Rating: 2 stars
Starring: Renee Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr., J.K. Simmons
Directed by: Jonas Elmer
Other: A Lionsgate Pictures release. Rated PG-13 (language) 96 minutes
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=1&type=video&item=223">Dann Gire interviews Harry Connick, Jr. </a></li> </ul> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=268363">Q&A with Connick</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>