MOVIE MONDAY - RED

“I love conspiracy theories. I used to just live on it. You know it’s all hype and garbage, but you’re still really paranoid afterwards. It’s fun entertainment.” - Doug Stanhope

We watched an amusing film at the weekend. Pure escapist nonsense, but we weren’t in the mood for anything else and this one seemed to be just the thing. On reflection, it wasn’t quite politically correct and it gave conflicting messages, but it was enough of a spoof to give it the ultimate thumbs up. However, one has to worry about subliminal messages delivered and how these are perceived by younger audiences…

It was the 2010 Robert Schwentke comedy/action movie “RED”, starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, Karl Urban, Rebecca Pidgeon, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss and Ernest Borgnine. Yes, the old familiar faces kept popping up throughout the movie. The screenplay was based on a graphic novel and one could detect the excesses of violence and action that these are replete with.

RED refers to “Retired, Extremely Dangerous” and this describes perfectly Francis, or Frank to his friends (Bruce Willis). He is a retired, bored, and lonely ex-CIA agent living off his government pension in an ordinary house in an ordinary suburb of an ordinary town. The only highlight in Frank’s life is his calls to the government pension processing centre when he gets to talk to his case worker, Sarah (Mary-Louis Parker). Sarah is as bored and lonely as Frank and marks her conversations with the unknown Frank and her spy novels as the only things fun in her life.

Suddenly out of the blue, Frank is attacked in his home by some armed CIA agents who obviously want him utterly dead. Frank’s old skills ensure he survives, but he goes to meet Sarah as he perceives she is also under threat. An initially reluctant Sarah is taken by Frank in tow as he tries to discover who wants them dead and why. Along the way, Frank’s ex-colleagues (Freeman, Malkovich, Mirren) join them and the intrigue is gradually uncovered. Along the way, the motley crew of REDs have to deal with CIA baddies Cooper (Urban) and Wilkes (Pidgeon) who are desperately trying to liquidate them.

The film is violent and there is a lot of use of weaponry of every description, meaning there are lots of bullets flying all the time, explosions, chases, bloody altercations, deaths and vaporisations. This action is quite extreme, to the extent that it resembles comic book violence although people are show to be injured and killed. Although there is presentation of a baddie as an illegal arms dealer, the use of lethal weaponry by the good guys is widespread as well. As I said this gave me a conflicting message and one has to question the film’s advocation of the use of weapons by “good guys” as a good thing. The whole USA gun-thing and the “right to bear arms” reared its ugly head, but we couldn’t be bothered to take issue with that.

The bottom line is, if the film is not taken seriously it is good entertainment value. The acting is good and the actors have fun with the excesses of the plot and the send-up of the whole action/spy/shoot-‘em-up genre. Willis has his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek as he plays a comedy part that sends up similar “serious” roles he played before, and Malkovich steals every scene he appears in, playing a mentally deranged conspiracy theorist who refuses to retire peacefully from the CIA. The direction is suitably light, but also tight and the action scenes are well staged and suspense does build up. There is a running joke with postcards from the places the REDs go to and the movie is almost like a road trip that wreaks havoc in every place they stop.

If you watch this film and expect Shakespeare, you’ll be disappointed. If you are on some high and mighty morality bandwagon you will abhor the movie, vilify the director, pour scorn on the actors and excommunicate the writers. If you are an intellectual and expect witticisms, subtle humour and delightful repartee, go watch a Shaw play. If you begin with low expectations, have an hour and a half to pass, take this film lightly and with a grain of salt, you’ll quite probably be entertained. It is a comic book tale for grown ups, requires no thinking and you’ll enjoy it as long as you suspend belief and engage in a forgiving move. Otherwise go watch an Ingmar Bergman film…

MOVIE MONDAY - THE LAST SUPPER

“Inside of many liberals is a fascist struggling to get out.” - John McCarthy

We watched a quirky little movie last weekend, Stacy Title’s 1995 movie, “The Last Supper”. It starred Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner, Courtney B. Vance and Ron Perlman and the screenplay by Dan Rosen.

Jude (Diaz), Luke (Vance), Marc (Penner), Paulie (Gish) and Pete (Eldard) are liberal-minded grad students at a Iowa post-secondary institution who all share a house. Every Sunday for a year, they have hosted a dinner party, inviting a friend over to have an open-minded discussion about whatever topics are of interest to everyone. On a dark and stormy night when Pete was supposed to bring a friend to one of those dinners, he comes home with Zachary Cody (Bill Paxton), who rescued the stranded Pete when his car broke down. They invite Zach to stay to dinner instead of Pete’s missing friend.

They soon find out that Zach is among other things a racist neo-Nazi, which brings up a potentially dangerous situation for Jewish Marc and black Luke. After some physical altercations and verbal threats, Marc ends up stabbing Zach dead out of what he considers self-defence. As the friends discuss what to do about Zach, they finally come to the conclusion that in killing Zach, they have done society a service. So they ponder “why not invite other people who are society’s scum and get rid of them once and for all?” Things get our of hand…

The film is a black comedy but it does raise the important issue of political extremism – far left or far right, it doesn’t matter as the two extremes meet on common ground! The basic premise of the film, “would people be justified in murdering someone if they knew he was evil?” is illustrated by the typical time travel scenario, where the five dinner hosts ponder the question  “If you could travel back in time, would you kill Hitler before he rose to power, to prevent the extermination of millions?” The question in their mind finally becomes easy to answer as their dinner guests one by one are disposed and buried in the garden giving bumper tomato crops.

As well as being a tolerable comedy, it is on the second, more philosophical level, that the film really succeeds. The liberals become intolerant killers, revealing the dangers of political correctness and the very real possibility of a left-wing police state in which alternative views are crushed in the name liberal values… The liberals become as “evil” as the rednecks they are dispatching into the next world.

The acting is good, although some of the (now famous) actors were just starting their acting career then. It has a poppy sound track and good settings and overall it was a cerebral, subversive, intelligent, and thought-provoking comedy. Well worth watching if ti comes your way.

And by the way, if you could time travel, would you go back and kill baby Hitler?...

MOVIE MONDAY - BLACK BOOKS

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” - Charlie Chaplin

We’ve recently finished watching the 2000-2004 British TV series “Black Books” created by Dylan Moran and starring Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig. In the 18 episodes of the series the cast manages to survive creating and playing this eccentric, offbeat and surreal comedy, which sometimes touches on the extremes of cartoon character capers.

Bernard Black (Moran) runs his own (mainly) second-hand bookshop even though he doesn’t like people who buy books and hates having customers, as well as detesting most other people in general. Next to Bernard’s shop is the Nifty Gifty gift shop run by Fran (Greig), who looks like she is the only person in the world who can tolerate Bernard and his bizarre behaviour. When Bernard’s accountant goes on the run because of shady dealings, Bernard employs stress victim and equally unconventional Manny (Bailey) to help him in his shop. This leads to mayhem and quite unbelievable (but often hilarious) misadventures with the mismatched trio managing to survive each precarious predicament they land themselves in.

The series is a typical British comedy series with much black humour, erratic and overdone plot lines, much slapstick, but also full of witty one-liners and occasionally great pathos, which is quickly defused by cartoon-like violence and lines that fall into the bathos of questionable taste. Overall it’s a crazy sit-com with unpredictable, fast-moving action, breathless repartee and a maddening pace.

The leads have great chemistry, with Moran as the alcoholic, chain-smoking, socially inept, misanthropic bookshop owner, Bailey as the anxious, long-suffering, sometimes talented and always capitulating shop-assistant, and Greig as the lonely, insecure and compromising hanger-on who acts as the adhesive to bring together everyone and everything into a tightly-knit comedic success.

Watch it if your funny bone is tickled by British black comedy and surreal dialogue/plots, but also be warned that there is much foul language, alcohol and tobacco use, drunkenness (with the positive aspects of being blotto extolled!), sexuality – in fact nothing much is sacred! We found it curiously addictive and found ourselves laughing often and being quite amused more often. I do hate the canned laughter in all of these shows… Why do they do it?

MOVIE MONDAY - THE LADY IN THE VAN

“A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.” - Robert Frost

Maggie Smith is an accomplished veteran actress and her work is quite exceptional in her long and very successful career. I enjoy most the movies and series she has played in and I have watched. When for my birthday I was given a copy of Nicholas Hytner’s 2015 movie “The Lady in the Van” I was very pleased and saved it to watch on a special day as a treat. Well that day came last weekend and yes, it was a good movie and we enjoyed seeing it, but somehow it was a little disappointing too. I guess I da raised my expectations quite a great deal and when the film failed to deliver fully, it was a little bit of a flat feeling.

First let me say this was Maggie Smith’s movie and she played her role with relish and great gusto. It was as if the role was written for her and she performed with her usual aplomb and panache, greatly enjoying playing the down-and-out Miss Shepherd. Beside her, her co-star Alex Jennings faded into the background, even if there were two of him on the screen most of the time (a cheap, gimmicky device where one of his selves was the “doing” part of him and the other the “writing” part of him). The other actors were competent and did a good enough job of supporting Maggie Smith’s performance.

The plot is based on the “mostly true” story of Alan Bennett’s curious relationship/friendship with Miss Mary Shepherd, an eccentric homeless woman whom Bennett befriended in the 1970s before allowing her temporarily to park her Bedford van in the driveway of his Camden home. She stayed there for 15 years. As the story develops Bennett learns that Miss Shepherd is really Margaret Fairchild (died 1989), a former gifted pupil of the pianist Alfred Cortot. She became a concert pianist, had played Chopin in a promenade concert, but things went wrong, she tried to become a nun, was committed to a mental institution by her brother, escaped, and then things went downhill and full of guilt for a “terrible sin” she had committed became the vagrant that Bennett unwittingly becomes associated with.

The plot is thin and depends very much on what the characters say rather than what they do. The “mystery” of Miss Shepherd’s identity is thinly veiled and the “surprise” ending where we learn the truth about her “terrible sin” is rather predictable. However, the viewer does get involved, does sympathise with Miss Shepherd in one scene and in the other becomes as infuriated with her as Alan Bennett does. There is poignancy, gentle humour, pathos, bathos and bombast. It is a very “English” movie which reeks a little of the stage, one thinking on many an occasion whether this would have made a better play perhaps?

Nicholas Hytner, the director, who also made “The Madness of King George” and “The History Boys” amongst others, is better known as a regular director for National Theatre productions in London. This may explain the “staginess” of the film. I often felt uncomfortable during the parts where Alan Bennett spoke to his alter ego in a greatly contrived manner.

Overall this was a gentle, slightly humorous, slightly melancholy film, a great showcase for Maggie Smith and a little bit of a bragging piece for Alan Bennett – there was a certain smugness about him whenever he was on screen. The subplot with his mother was a little perplexing, especially given the way he interacted with Miss Shepherd, but still overall the film was entertaining and well worth watching.

MOVIE MONDAY - RATATOUILLE

“I don’t like food that’s too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I’d buy a painting.” - Andy Rooney

A DVD of the 2007 Pixar animated feature “Ratatouille” came into my hands the other day. I had heard positive things about this film but had not watched it until last weekend. It was directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, the latter having written the original story. Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, Patton Oswalt, Janeane Garofalo and Peter O’Toole provided voices for the animated characters.

Remy is a rat with a great nose and exquisitely sensitive taste buds. He finds that he also has a great talent for cooking and dreams of becoming a great French chef despite his family’s wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. When Remy is lost in the sewers of Paris, he finds himself fortuitously situated beneath the very same restaurant made famous by his culinary hero, head chef Auguste Gusteau. Remy enters the kitchen and meets young kitchen hand Linguini who has just started work there. Despite being an unlikely - and certainly unwanted - visitor in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant, Remy’s passion for cooking elevates Linguini to the status of a chef and sets in motion some amazing changes in the restaurant and the lives of all who work there.

The winning combination of Disney and Pixar has produced some amazing computer-generated animated films, including “A Bug’s Life”, “Toy Story”, “Monsters, Inc.”, “The Incredibles”, “Finding Nemo”. “Ratatouille” is quite stunning visually, surreal and realistic at the same time, and a joy to watch. The characters are poetic and engaging, and the rats are some of Disney-Pixar’s cutest. The film is definitely not a “children’s only” one, but one that would be enjoyed by the whole family with layers of jokes and meaning that differently aged viewers would each appreciate as appropriate. I would even venture to say that is primarily a film for adults that children can watch and enjoy also.

I have seen “A Bug’s Life”, “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo” and consider “Ratatouille” to be superior to all of these. The animation is splendid, the story wonderful, the comedy well-paced, the voice characterisations apt and the message of the film well-stated. Not everyone can do anything, but if you have a special skill or talent, don’t be afraid to use it and stick with it, even in the most adverse of circumstances. There is also a wonderful sequence relating to the food critic Anton Ego (marvellously voiced by Peter O’Toole), full of poignancy and honesty. I enjoyed this film very much and recommend it most highly for a wonderful 111 minutes of good, wholesome, entertaining family viewing.

MOVIE MONDAY - LOUKOUMADES ME MELI

“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” - Winston Churchill

Is it possible to make a comedy film about a very serious issue without risking making the whole exercise ridiculous, or trivialising the issues involved? The answer is an overwhelming “yes”. Comedy is infinitely more complex than a means of generating a few laughs. True comedy is serious business and any comedy that takes itself seriously and doesn’t depend on the scatological or slapstick for humour has underlying themes that are challenging. Think of some of your favourite jokes – chances are that they deal with some sensitive topics, topics that challenge our comfort zone.

Humour is a way of relieving tension, defusing potentially emotionally taxing situations and taking the sting out of situations that are tragic. Major tragedies like the Challenger disaster or Hurricane Katrina left in their wake jokes, ranging from the poignant to the frankly tasteless. In all cases people were attempting to deal with an emotionally draining and immensely heartrending situation by taking a view of it that allowed some lightening of the discomfort with a take on it that was humorous.

Humour has many faces, comedy can be of many kinds, but in all cases the effect is beneficial. Laughter (and lots of it!) aids our physical health, reduces the chance of mental illness, helps to prolong our life. For Movie Monday today, I am reviewing a 2005 comedy I saw recently that deals with several serious and distressing topics. First: Paedophilia (child molestation); second: Death; and third: Obesity and body image problems. It is by Greek Director Olga Malea and is titled: “Λουκουμάδες με Μέλι” (Loukoumádes me Méli – Doughnuts with Honey).

The film was made with the help of six adorable piglets and 23,500 doughnuts. The piglets survived; however, many of the doughnuts were eaten during the making of this movie. The cast is well chosen and Pavlos Haikalis, especially plays a very difficult role well. The leads are likeable and handle the comedy well, while many of the supporting actors enjoy the excesses of the script with gusto. Olga Malea seems to be able to balance the slapstick with the pathos, and some scenes get a belly laugh, while in the same breath one finds one’s heartstrings tugged.

The cinematography is gorgeous and many of the scenes display the beauty of springtime in rural Greece wonderfully. We also saw some innovative camera work in the way that some difficult scenes were handled. Small town life in provincial Greece is brought to life successfully and there is a wry commentary on modern-day mores and technology, and how these impinge on traditional attitudes and strait-laced cultural icons.

A very good movie, see it if you can, not only for the laughs, but also for an excellent consideration of some very “heavy” material that confronts us in an unexpected way and challenges our comfort zone. As far as the piglet and where it fits into the story, you’ll have to watch the film and find out, its role is crucial!

MOVIE MONDAY - I HEART HUCKABEES

“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” Albert Camus

For Movie Monday I am reviewing David O’ Russel’s 2004 film, “I Heart Huckabees”. I had heard nothing about this film when it first came out and looking at the cover, seeing who was in it (Dustin Hoffmann and Lily Tomlin, especially, whose work I like) and reading the hype on the sleeve convinced me to rent it and watch it. The film is described by its tagline as an “Existential Comedy”. It concerns Albert (Jason Schwartzman), a poet and environmental activist who suddenly finds himself wondering about coincidences, existence, the meaning of life, etc, etc. He hires a husband and wife team of “existential detectives” (Hoffmann and Tomlin), who begin to spy on him and analyse his psyche in order to shed life into his existential quandary. A subplot is the power struggle between a corporate wunderkind, Brad (Jude Law) and Albert and also the insecurity that Brad hides behind his highly successful veneer. Another power struggle is between the detectives and Catherine (a rival psychologist played by Isabelle Haupert).

Firstly, if you are offended by gratuitous coarse and vulgar language used for no reason at all except to shock, don’t watch this movie. I am not offended by it, if it used for a good reason. There is no reason for its use in this film and the shock value is exhausted after the first episode where the expletives fly left, right and centre. Repeat offences are boring and completely pointless.

Secondly, I found the premise on which the film is constructed deeply annoying: That is, “let’s make a comedy where we bandy around with existentialist philosophy and we’ll bring enlightenment to the masses without them even realizing it…” Instead of being a funny “take” on philosophy (what the Monty Python crowd do successfully to say, the church), this is a tired, trite, pointless attempt at satire that loses itself in its own convolutions. What comes out is an almost didactic, heavy-handed message on the “evils of capitalism”…

Thirdly, I found the movie without a clear-cut audience in mind. A serious student of philosophy would find it tiresome and humourless, an intelligent and educated lay person would be puzzled (but surely not amused), an ordinary person in the street would be asleep within the first few minutes of the film and find the whole thing pretentious and beyond approachability.

Fourthly, what a waste of a talented cast… You could see them trying to wring out some humour from the script, but even the sight gags fell flat and some I found quite off-putting. Why for example would anyone find two people hitting each other hard with a rubber ball in the face (repeatedly) funny, I don't know. Similarly, in a romantic interlude Albert and Catherine push each other’s face into mud and then passionately kiss the goo off each other… I was supposed to find that comic, romantic, revelatory, insightful…?

I found this film extremely unsatisfying, unfunny, unchallenging, not worthy of even being “hated”. Simply a waste of my time. Looking at the International Movie Data Base’s archive of comments, it seems to have aggregated a score of around 7/10, which is 4 more points than what I gave it. There are some extremely polarised comments some agreeing with me, others glorifying the “originality” and wonderfully “original” aspect of this “new comedy”. I agree with one commentator who likened the film to “The Emperor’s New Clothes…”

If you have seen this film, I would welcome your comaments. Maybe I’m too stupid to “get it”. Maybe I don’t understand philosophy too well?  Maybe I don't have a sense of humour? Hmmmmm…

MOVIE MONDAY - 3 FRENCH FILMS

“Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit.” - Stendhal
 

We watched three French films recently and overall they were all very good. Living in Australia it is rather more difficult to find a wide variety of good international movies in most DVD shops, so when I see something that looks interesting and in a language other than English, I enthusiastically grab it. In some cases the film has disappointed, but in over 90% of cases we have generally enjoyed my choices.
 

The first, was the 2009 Catherine Corsini movie, “Leaving” (Partir), which starred Kristin Scott Thomas, Sergi López and Yvan Attal. This was a graphic tale of power, family, love, sex and complex relationships in a typical love triangle - shades of Madame Bovary in a modern-day setting. The film does contain some sex scenes, so be warned.
 

Scott Thomas plays Suzanne, a well-to-do married wife and mother in the south of France. Her idle, comfortable bourgeois lifestyle bores her and as her children are growing up, she decides to go back to work as a physiotherapist. She begins to study as a refresher, and her doctor husband (Attal) agrees to renovate a storage building as a consulting room for her in their backyard. When Suzanne and Ivan (López), the man hired to do the building, meet the mutual attraction is as sudden as it is passionate. Suzanne has little hesitation to give up her life, her family and all her future plans in order to live this love to the fullest.
 

The film is gritty and realistic, and even though Suzanne is depicted as the faithless wife betraying her husband and family, one cannot help but sympathise with her, especially as the film develops and her husband’s attitude towards her is explored. It is difficult to fathom what Suzanne is experiencing: Is it true love, an overwhelming passion, or an attempt to reaffirm her femininity in order to experience Ivan’s tenderness towards her (something that is missing from her relationship with her husband)? The vulnerability of each of the three main characters is artfully displayed by the director, who is very restrained in the way she depicts the foibles of all three. Quite an enjoyable movie.
 

The second film was “IP5: The Island of the Pachyderms” (IP5: L'île aux pachyderms) a 1992 film by director Jean-Jacques Beineix, starring Yves Montand, Olivier Martinez and Sekkou Sall. This was part road movie, part coming-of-age tale, part quest for the ideal love movie. It is notable for being Yves Montand’s last movie (he died in 1991, before the film’s release).

Two young people, Tony (Martinez) a dysfunctional anti-social angry youth and his friend, Jockey (Sall) a black boy, live a precarious existence in the ethnic minority slums of Paris. They deface walls with graffiti and decorate billboards with art. Tony gets in serious trouble with a gang of drug pushers and in order to extricate himself, agrees to deliver a consignment of “gnomes” to Grenoble. En route, Tony decides to head for Toulouse instead, in pursuit of a girl he met briefly in Paris and with whom he has fallen in love. The two youngsters dump the truck, steal a couple of cars and in the second one, they find that Leon, a tramp and mystic (Montand), is hiding in the back seat. They form an unlikely threesome, each pursuing a dream, each finding within themselves a redeeming feature that changes their lives.
 

Beineix has made some interesting films, including “Betty Blue”, “The Moon in the Gutter” and “Diva”. Socially marginal anti-establishment characters on a quest seems to be a recurring theme with this director. This film has an engaging style, often lapses into visual lyricism and Montand’s acting shines forth like a diamond. The two young leads also do a great job acting and the cinematography, music and direction are wonderful. We were kept engaged and interested throughout this movie that looks at France’s minorities, some of their problems, but more importantly, the universality of human emotions and needs.
 

Third in the list is Claude Lelouch’s 2007 movie, “Crossed Tracks” (“Roman de Gare”) starring Fanny Ardant, Dominique Pinon and Audrey Dana. This was a quirky film that was nevertheless well made, original and kept you guessing for quite a while with its clever plot and false leads. One has to pay close attention to the story, but at the same time, this is not hard to do as the movie is interesting, the acting is good and the plot has few if any holes in it. One’s changing evaluation of the characters as one watches and learns more of them, is part of the pleasure of watching this film.
 

The plot centres on (but is not mainly about!) the successful novelist Judith Ralitzer (Ardant). We start out with Judith’s interrogation at a police station regarding the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A the same time, a serial-killer/child rapist escapes from a prison in Paris. A school teacher leaves his wife and children and goes missing, while his wife desperately tries to find him but instead falls in love with the police detective in charge of the case. Further afield, on the road, an annoying and stressed hairdresser, Huguette (Dana) is abandoned at a service station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the farm of her family in the country in order to introduce her fiancé and announce their wedding to them. A man (Pinon) offers her a ride and she pleads with him to assume the identity of her fiancé for 24 hours so as not to disappoint her mother. Who is who? What is truth and what is a lie? Who is the killer and who is the victim?
 

This is a great movie, full of incident, quirky characters, humour, pathos, intrigue, mystery and drama. We enjoyed it very much and had a laugh, identified with some situations, booed at the villain only to discover that it was a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and were surprised by the ending. The film could have easily been a mess, but Lelouch shows his mastery of the medium, while the actors pull all stops out to give fantastic performances. Pinon is really the star of the film, but is ably supported by Ardant and Dana is quite refreshing as the pathetic “airhead” hairdresser.

MOVIE MONDAY - NEW IN TOWN

“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.” - Woody Allen

We watched a very lightweight romantic comedy at the weekend – not exceedingly objectionable, but at the same time not particularly memorable. It was the 2009 Jonas Elmer film “New in Town” starring Renée Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr. and Siobhan Fallon Hogan. The plot is predictable and lightweight, the humour mildly amusing and the viewpoint fairly innocent, although there is a plot concession to the economic downturn and acknowledgement that all is not right in the world. It is once again a typical “chick flick”, hardly original but nevertheless competently done.

Zellweger plays Lucy Hill, a high-profile businesswoman of a Miami-based conglomerate, who volunteers to head north to Minnesota to “clean-up” a tiny food plant, cut its workforce by half and retool for an automated new product launch. She’s the typical career woman dreaming this assignment will land her a vice-presidency. She is lacking in people-to-people skills and her empathy with those in adverse situations is about –10. She comes to freezing Minnesota, dressed inappropriately (high heels, mini skirt and thin coat) and manages to alienate every local in sight with her insensitivity. Siobhan Fallon Hogan plays Blanche, her local personal assistant, who is much better at making tapioca puddings or scrapbooking than being a high-powered secretary. The film gets lots of comedic mileage out of the clash of city smarts versus folksy wisdom. Harry Connick Jr. plays Ted, the area union chief, who is Lucy’s romantic interest, and there is also a strong supporting performance by J.K. Simmons as the plant foreman who runs afoul of Lucy’s plans.

“New in Town” is not like the similar old movies of Capra, for example, but is quite amusing and gives Zellweger to show off her comedic skills. Harry Connick Jr is adequate and his role is fairly traightforward, but the film belongs to the girls with the interactions between Lucy and Blanche providing the most amusement. Although the jokes are mild and some are old, they are delivered well and one can spend a fairly pleasant 97 minutes watching this film. Danish director Jonas Enders making his Hollywood debut plays it very safe and hence he comes up with a fairly “safe” pedestrian product and he struggles to make any scene memorable.

The rather sinister turn of the plot about lay-offs and disappearing companies that are becoming all too frequent in our daily life these days is not examined to any depth by the film. This could have been explored more and provided a greater opportunity for black humour. The “Deus ex machina” that will assure the film of a happy end is predictable, and unfortunately we have run out of both “dei” and “machinae” in real life. We would recommend this film as a lightweight romantic comedy that one can watch and smile or giggle at occasionally, an innocuous escapist soap bubble that will relieve some tension and stress of the viewers. An average, typical, Hollywood B-grade romantic comedy.

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