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New in Town

Buffalo audiences are guaranteed one good laugh out of New in Town. Miami business executive Lucy Hill (Renée Zellweger) arrives at a Minnesota airport in garb suitable to Florida. Proud of herself for having brought a sweater to deal with the weather, she puts it on, steps out into the November chill—and screams. I haven’t ruined the gag for you by describing it; it’s funny even though you see it coming a mile away. Unfortunately the rest of the movie, while equally predictable, isn’t funny at all.

The premise of a big-city character visiting a small town and having his or her condescending attitudes upended is so old that it can almost be considered a comedy subgenre: Remember Local Hero, Doc Hollywood, The Englishman Who Went up a Hill, and the classic Nothing Sacred. Unlike those films, though, New in Town goes through the motions with all the grace and vivacity of a basset hound on snowshoes. You can’t root for either side: Lucy, who has been sent to downsize a local food plant, is a cold-hearted corporate clone who spouts empty buzzwords and openly sneers at her hosts’ small-town virtues, while the local yokels have wood paneling on every wall in town, swill tapioca by the gallon, and talk in accents they seem to have picked up from watching Fargo. (The main yokel is even named “Gunderson.”) Attitudes change when the timeline of the plot calls for it, not because the characters have developed in any organic way. Even fans of Zellweger are unlikely to warm up to this chilly fish-out-of-water tale: The naturalistic photography, better suited to an indie comedy than a star vehicle, is awfully unflattering to her, as is a haircut that seems to have been designed to make her look as much as possible unlike herself. Maybe some blame can be laid at the foot of director Jonas Elmer, new to Hollywood from his native Denmark. Still, it’s hard to believe any filmmaker could have wrung more than a few giggles out of the tired, half-hearted script.

m. faust



Watch the movie trailer for New In Town


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