Here is one of the most artificial and cloying movies I've come across in a long time. I have nothing against feel good movies, but New in Town simply tries too hard. It desperately wants to be uplifting, sweet and lighthearted, and you can see it straining to do so in nearly every scene. The thing is, I probably would have liked the movie better if it didn't try so hard. Well, maybe not. I've enjoyed fluffy, escapist romantic comedies in the past, but New in Town is so fluffy and mindless, it makes Bride Wars look like a hard-hitting documentary on the wedding planning industry.

Usually, it takes a while for the realization to dawn on me that I'm watching a stinker. And sometimes, I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach from the very opening scene. That's what happened here. The movie opens with a group of Minnesota women sitting around a kitchen table, gossiping with one another. As soon as I heard their cutesy and chirpy Midwest accents, which made the actors sound like they were rejects from a low-rent community theater production of Fargo, I started to dread what was to come. Imagine someone doing a really bad imitation of Tina Fey's imitation of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, and you'll get the idea of how almost everyone talks in this movie. I have no doubt that there are people who talk this way, but I seriously doubt they're as cloyingly cute as this movie makes them out to be. The topic of discussion is the local factory and how it's been bought out by a big corporation, and how that corporation is coming to town to oversee their operations. Oh, and they're also talking about tapioca pudding, which will surprisingly become a major plot point later on in the story.

But before the pudding grabs our attention, the movie wants us to focus on a hard-nosed career woman named Lucy Hill. She's played by Renee Zellweger, and the movie tells us she's a serious, opportunity-minded woman with an edge who's not afraid to step on the little people to get what she wants. Of course, we don't buy it for a second, because she's played by Renee Zellweger. Seriously, have you ever seen a hard-nosed or edgy performance from her? Even in Chicago, where she played a woman guilty of murder, she was likable if only in a manipulative way. But, the movie goes on pretending we're convinced that she's a real power-driven bitch. She arrives in the tiny Minnesota town to make plans to automate the factory and lay off a majority of the workers. At this point, the movie wants to be a fish out of water comedy. You see, Lucy lives in Miami, so she's naturally not prepared for the Minnesota winter. (You'd think her bosses over in Florida would have told her to dress appropriately.) She's also not prepared for the folksy, down-home individuals that make up the entire population of the town. Some of the locals don't like her, like the factory foreman (J.K. Simmons), who suspects Lucy is here to lay them off.

But there are plenty of locals who open their hearts and welcome her. The main one is Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan). She's Lucy's secretary while she's here, and she's also the tapioca woman from the opening scene. She's the kind of woman who greets you with a hug and a handshake, then asks if you have found Jesus. ("I didn't know he was missing", Lucy replies.) Blanche can tell right off the bat that Lucy is lonely, so she invites her to her house for dinner and to meet the town's most eligible bachelor, Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick Jr). Ted's the local union representative, and doesn't get off on the right foot with Lucy, because she insults country music. But before long, they start to warm up to each other, even though I saw no reason for attraction. They fall in love because their names come first in the cast, and they're required to. Their relationship starts with them constantly bickering with each other about everything. I suppose it's supposed to come across as foreplay, but their banter is not convincing in the least. Their relationship didn't even make a lot of sense to me. At one point, she accidentally shoots him in the butt when he takes her crow hunting, and the next scene they're together it's not even brought up.

In its single-minded goal for a happy ending, New in Town leaves nothing to chance. We get Lucy's transformation from supposed power-obsessed woman, to someone who learns to appreciate small town life. We get Lucy and Ted awkwardly getting closer together, even though it seems like half of their romantic subplot was left on the cutting room floor. We get Lucy and the town rallying together to save the factory and their jobs with the help of tapioca pudding. We also get a climax that hinges on the suspense as to wether Lucy will return to Florida, or stay with those nice Minnesota folks who have managed to win her over during the course of the film. I have no doubt that material like this could be charming and uplifting, but it would have to be a lot less banal than it comes across here. It doesn't help that the characters are completely one dimensional and impossible to care about. This is a movie that piles on the syrupy sweetness, and expects that alone is enough for us to walk out of the theater with a song in our hearts.

New in Town did not have the required effect on me. It made me cringe. It made me restless. It also made me want to see a movie that knew how to use the chemistry of Zellweger and Connick, as they show none of it here. This is the very definition of a January release that kind of comes and goes from the theater, then spends the rest of its life in the dark corner of a video store with no one really noticing it. It's a movie that almost seems like it was made to be forgotten. I know I'll be doing my best to do just that as soon as possible.

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