If you ever wanted to see the folksy residents of the Coen Bros.’ Fargo in a formula romantic comedy, here’s your chance: Jonas Elmer’s New in Town transports a Miami city girl to Minnesota, and leaves no Harve Gunderson or “don’tcha know” unturned.
The formula works, I suppose, which is why we see so many of these films. But if you don’t find much wrong with New in Town, you’re not looking hard enough: this is a creative void that represents a lot of what is wrong in contemporary cinema.
Renée Zellweger stars as Lucy Hill, high-powered executive for a big food corporation who accidentally accepts a tour of duty in New Ulm, Minnesota, to oversee the downsizing of the town’s big factory.
There she meets characters named Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon) and Tracy Van Uuden (Frances Conroy), factory foreman Stu Kopenhafer (J.K. Simmons) and head of the labor union Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick, Jr.).
Cue endless jokes about how cold it is in Minnesota, and how dern funny them people talk. You betcha.
After five or ten minutes, you’ll know exactly where this film is going, and there are precisely no surprises along the way.
Is there any doubt that the townspeople and Lucy will clash, then gradually come to accept each other? That Lucy and Ted will forge a relationship that unfolds in the exact same manner? That the plant will be saved in the end?
The details might be interesting, but driving the plot here are vague corporate products, tapioca pudding, and North Face product placement.
This is a very specific story that has come to bat a number of times before: your usual ‘fish out of water’ comedy mixed with the plot of said fish shutting down the native’s big factory.
This plot needs to have a certain ending to work, yet the Hollywood formula keeps carrying it in the opposite direction; therefore it’s almost never worked, the lone possible exception being Tennessee Williams’ This Property is Condemned and Sydney Pollack’s campy film version starring Robert Redford and Natalie Wood.
A talented cast is mostly wasted. J.K. Simmons is usually a reliable comedy actor, but he’s hidden here beneath a thick beard and an even thicker accent. The accents in the film are so exaggerated for comedic effect, it’s as if Fargo were a penetrating documentary.
