Sub-zero

Renée Zellweger is freezing, but not pleasing,
in the lame romantic comedy New in Town

COLD COMFORT: Harry Connick Jr. and Zellweger

by MALCOLM FRASER

Oh, Renée Zellweger… how far you’ve fallen. While the sub-pedestrian comedy New in Town is hardly the worst call in Zellweger’s tragic career (see Miss Potter or Appaloosa for recent contenders), its aggressively bland title points the way to abject failure, a fate which the film avoids by the narrowest of margins.

Zellweger plays Lucy, a Miami-based food-industry executive who gets dispatched to a small-town factory in Minnesota to implement harsh new corporate standards. She runs into cold weather, locals with funny accents and wacky traditions, and a union rep (Harry Connick Jr.) who happens to be a handsome, widowed single dad. Her snobbish big-city ways and corporate ruthlessness clash with his small-town values and working-class authenticity, but—wait for it—there’s also a spark of attraction between them.

There was a fascinating, if depressing, article in The New Yorker recently, a profile of a Hollywood marketing executive that touched on New in Town and the challenges it posed to its studio. It’s probably a bad idea to read the article before seeing the film, because it reinforces the sinking feeling that Danish director Jonas Elmer, in his Hollywood debut, is either way out of his element or a victim of the same nefarious corporate forces that his film limply criticizes.

Either way, the result is a botch. The characterizations are overly broad, the gags fall flat, and the film is full of mawkish sentimentality and plot twists visible from miles away. Zellweger manages some charm with the physical comedy that made her endearing as Bridget Jones, but—far be it from me to speculate on her cosmetic-procedure habits—the fact that her cheeks no longer move is a serious impediment to showing emotion.

When she finally—spoiler alert!—gets onside with the lovable locals, the film at least pulls off its clichés with some spirit, as well as a surprising, if half-assed, hint of class politics. There’s also a funny supporting turn by an unrecognizable J.K. Simmons (aka the dad from Juno) as a factory foreman who spouts absurdly baroque folksy expressions. But the film is really quite terrible, and should only be seen if the winter blues have you in dire need of the meagrest dose of romcom remedy.

NEW IN TOWN OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, JAN. 30