After years of bad choices, Reese Witherspoon did much to pull her career back into some semblance of respectability last year with her turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice and her Oscar-nominated performance in Jean-Marc Vallee’s Wild. And just like that, she’s torpedoed it all with Anne Fletcher’s Hot Pursuit — a boneheaded, obnoxious comedy that suffers from a terminal case of mediocrity. Hot Pursuit’s one of those films where the biggest issue is its propensity towards wallowing in the most rote, jokey and predictable comedy. That director Fletcher — with a filmography that includes The Guilt Trip (2012) and The Proposal (2009) — and a couple of writers (David Feeney and John Quaintance) who’ve specialized in sitcoms are behind such tepid nonsense should be a shock to no one.
The whole thing feels like the pilot for some midseason replacement on ABC (Witherspoon’s co-star Sofía Vergara doesn’t help things) — one sorely in need of a laugh track to spice things up. The idea is that Witherspoon (with a garishly overdone Southern accent) is a humorless, by-the-book cop named Cooper who’s been relegated to the evidence room after tasing an unarmed man and setting him on fire (nothing like a tone deaf police brutality gag to lay the foundation of your movie). Then she’s given the chance to finally get back out into the field when she’s asked to help transport a snitch (Vincent Laresca, Devil) and his wife Daniella (Vergara) to Dallas to testify against a Mexican cartel boss (Joaquin Cosio, The Lone Ranger). But Cooper’s ambushed, and her partner (Richard T. Jones, Godzilla) is killed, while she and Daniella barely escape and head out on the lam.
Here, Hot Pursuit becomes just another buddy cop movie. Cooper, the anal-retentive bore and Daniella, the brash sexpot, are total opposites who, slowly but surely, learn to become friends. I nodded off just typing that. As with all films that fit within a specific genre (or sub-genre), this movie’s been done before. But the trick is to somehow make this tried-and-true (or, perhaps, hackneyed would be better) plot feel fresh and inventive. Fletcher and company do not. All of its twists and turns are predictable, its jokes flat. All that’s left is a screwball comedy that just flops around waving its arms like some attention-starved child. Add to this the gratingly shrill nature of the film’s leads (Vergara’s screechiness is the stuff of Lovecraft) and what you’re left with is a movie that’s not tried-and-true, but tired and tiresome. Rated PG-13 for sexual content, violence, language and some drug material.
Witherspoon has had only one good performance. ELECTION.
That’s demonstrably not true — Wild and Inherent Vice.
I thought she was great in Walk the Line — though I’ll definitely be giving this a miss.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. If you like Legally Blonde, you’ll like this, too.
Well, I pretty much hated Legally Blonde, but not nearly as much as its sequel.
And here we go, getting people to read about this donkey crap rather than something worthwhile because we’re talking about it.
Misery loves company.
No, people look at the reviews with the most comments. It’s pretty simple.
I was so mad she got an Academy Award for nothing more than “talkin with a ‘twang”. Felicity Huffman should have got it that year for Transamerica.
I wouldn’t argue that, but…it’s the freaking Oscars and therefore amusing, but meaningless.
Sounds trivial
You don’t say!