In Jonas Elmer's dreadfully lame romcom, Renée Zellweger stars as Lucy Hill, a hard-charging corporate shark determined to climb the management ladder, who assumes responsibility for downsizing and ultimately closing a marginally profitable Minnesota food-processing plant. As a gal from Miami, Lucy is ill-prepared for life in the Gopher State…especially during winter. A widowed union representative (Harry Connick Jr.), the crusty plant manager (J.K. Simmons), and a ditzy secretary (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) show Lucy the ropes, even though they suspect she's there to kill their jobs. Of course, the exposure to good old-fashioned Midwest hospitality finally wears down the exec, who finds a way to save the plant and falls in love with the union rep she initially despised. The characters and situations lack originality, while the depiction of Minnesota life is pure caricature in this hackneyed, largely unfunny yarn. And what genius figured that this was the right time to make a comedy about manufacturing-sector layoffs? Not recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include an audio commentary (picture-in-picture on the Blu-ray version) with costars J. K. Simmons and Siobhan Fallon Hogan and writers C. Jay Cox and Kenneth Rance, an 18-minute location featurette, deleted scenes (15 min.), a featurette on “The Folk Art of Scrapbooking” (8 min.), a “Pudding's Delicious Role” featurette (6 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is a “MoLog” feature that lets users insert and animate shapes, text, audio and other graphics into the film to share with other users, and the BD-Live function. Bottom line: an interesting extras package for a disappointing comedy.] (E. Hulse)
New in Town
Lionsgate, 96 min., PG, DVD: $29.95, Blu-ray: $39.99, May 26 Volume 24, Issue 3
New in Town
Star Ratings
As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.
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