Two stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, sexual candor, profanity and drug references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.1.15
In the space of one short month at the
end of last year, Reese Witherspoon starred in an inspirational drama about
Sudanese refugees settling in Missouri (The Good Lie); collected a
well-deserved Academy Award nomination for her persuasive portrayal of solo
hiker Cheryl Strayed (Wild); and delivered a droll supporting performance as
a snarky deputy district attorney in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s admittedly
weird — but oddly compelling — handling of a notorious Thomas Pynchon novel
(Inherent Vice).
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| Worried about their ability to remain on the down-low, given that every TV newscast has been leading with their photographs, Daniella (Sofía Vergara, left) nonetheless assures Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) that this particular sales clerk won't be staring at her face. |
So ... what does Reese — a
previous Oscar winner, let us not forget, for her memorable turn as June Carter,
in Walk the Line — do for a follow-up?
Something rilly, rilly nifty,
right?
If only.
I’ve no idea why high-caliber
talents such as Witherspoon attach themselves to low-rent junk such as Hot
Pursuit. There’s no way David Feeney and John Quaintance’s misbegotten script
ever could have shown promise. Nor has it been dragged to life by director Anne
Fletcher, which merely proves that the pudding was rancid to begin with; she did
far better with previous comedies such as 27 Dresses, The Guilt Trip and
most particularly The Proposal.
Fletcher clearly knows funny, and
Witherspoon can do funny. So can co-star Sofía Vergara, as she has quite ably
demonstrated during six seasons (and counting) of television’s Modern Family.
No, the blame here belongs solely
to the numb-nuts script, which plays like a bottom-of-the-barrel television
sitcom episode. No surprise there, since Feeney is a veteran of slapstick (but
successful) TV work such as New Girl, According to Jim and 2 Broke Girls, while Quaintance has struggled with less successful rom-coms such as Perfect
Couples, Whitney and Ben and Kate.
So if this big-screen gal-pal
comedy looks, walks and quacks like a TV duck, there’s ample reason.
Mind you, I’ve no objection per se to dumb and aggressively loud TV comedies; I’ve laughed plenty hard during
random episodes of New Girl. (2 Broke Girls ... not so much.) But there
comes a point when it too frequently feels as if the stars in such material are
trying to wring laughter from predictably stupid plots and dead-on-arrival one-liners.
That’s most definitely the case
with Hot Pursuit.
