WITH the recession getting worse by the day, it’s asking an awful lot for audiences to laugh at a romantic comedy centering on corporate layoffs.
Unfortunately, the bad timing may be the least of the problems with the excruciatingly unfunny “New in Town,” surely poor Renée Zellweger’s worst movie since “The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1994).
At least the then-future Oscar winner was supposed to be unflatteringly photographed in that slasher flick.
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Working from a script that no doubt quickly landed in Sandra Bullock’s wastebasket, Zellweger is woefully miscast as Lucy, a frosty corporate shark from Miami who is dispatched to a small town in Minnesota to downsize a food-processing plant.
This movie’s idea of Minnesota – we won’t embarrass the credited writers – seems to have been entirely gleaned from watching “Fargo” on TV in the middle of the night after consuming a six pack.
The nosy, g-dropping local woman assigned as Lucy’s secretary – gratingly overplayed in a series of eyeball-gougingly ugly sweaters by Siobhan Fallon Hogan – is even named Blanche Gunderson.
You betcha.
The movie’s level of wit is typified by this exchange between Lucy and Blanche.
Blanche: “Have you found Jesus?”
Lucy: “I didn’t know he was missing.”
Them’s the jokes, folks, and it doesn’t improve when Lucy meets Ted (Harry Connick Jr.), the plant’s union rep.
Lucy quickly dismisses him as a “loser who drinks beer and drive a pick-up truck.”
Of course, our heroine defrosts quicker than a Manhattan snowfall after Ted digs her car out of a snowbank following a near-encounter with a cow during a blizzard.
“You know, you’re not so bad when you’re unconscious,” Ted tells Lucy – probably not a bad way to approach this movie.
How awful is “New in Town”? Let me list its comic high points for you:
1. Lucy struggling with the zipper of a pair of hunting overalls so she can pee in the woods.
2. Lucy accidentally shooting the plant manager (J.K. Simmons) she fired in the buttocks.
3. A tapioca fight in the plant.
Donchaknow by this point, Lucy has not only fallen for Ted but for the whole town. Heck, she even likes scrapbooking and fights to avoid the layoffs.
Tone-deaf director Jonas Elmer seems to be laboring under the delusion he’s making a Capra-esque comedy, but what does he know? He’s from Denmark.
Based on the dire prospects for the direct-to-video-grade “New in Town,” I wouldn’t be surprised if downsizing took place any day now at its corporate sponsors, Gold Circle Films and Lionsgate Films.