-
Reese WitherspoonSofía Vergara
-
ComedyThriller
-
Anne Fletcher
-
In 1 Cinema
Marija Loncarevic
“Let’s get two beautiful women and put them in a series of slapstick mishaps” seems to be the general line of thinking for action-comedy, Hot Pursuit, and it’s every bit as astonishingly primitive as it sounds. Written by David Feeney and John Quaintance, its one big ball of clichés and not even the pairing of Reese Whiterspoon and Sofia Vergara will make you think otherwise.
The experience of sitting through Anne Fletcher’s painfully unfunny and mind-numbingly stupid latest action-comedy is definitely something one wouldn’t want to go through twice.
Set in Texas, Hot Pursuit follows the story of Rose Cooper (Whiterspoon); an uptight by-the-book police officer who – after accidentally tasering a drunk college student and setting him on fire – has been confined to desk duty in the police evidence room as punishment.
Already battling to step out of the shadow of her revered cop father, Rose’s shot at redemption comes in assigned to guard Daniella Riva (Vergara); the wife of a local criminal who’s preparing to testify against his ex-mob-boss. Naturally, things don’t go to plan and Rose finds herself on the run with her loud, new friend from the mob and a bunch of crooked cops.
There is a hell of a lot of screaming, bickering and shrieking involved in Hot Pursuit; a shallow comedy that could have done with a sprinkle of subtlety. The dialogue is contrived, chemistry between the leads is non-existent and the jokes – if you can really call them that – are dreadfully obvious, outdated and on-the-nose.
But the aforementioned lack of chemistry between the two main stars is possibly the film’s biggest downfall – it’s much easier to forgive a comedy’s shortcomings if the actors can rise above it and connect with the audience. Unfortunately, Vergara plays a slightly more unruly version of her Modern Family character, while Witherspoon goes through the motions as another intelligent-but-ditsy, in-over-her-head character, as Hollywood continues to disregard the very real talent that she possesses.
Essentially, the film relies far too heavily on the reputations of its two leads and there’s very little that surprises throughout the film and it never really even commits to the ‘odd-couple’ dynamic.