New in Town

What the hell is going on with Renée Zellweger? She's always been a polarizing actress, but even longtime fans of her sparkiness and, well, barkiness in films such as Cold Mountain, Bridget Jones's Diary, and Doris-Day channeler Down With Love can't help but be befuddled by her recent choices (including this month's Golden Globes getup, in which she channeled Day once again, only the latter-era, frosted and feathered kind). Hollywood can be unforgiving, especially about its aging actresses; if Zellweger is going to make a case for her continued relevance in a town that tosses its former sweethearts to the dustbin by age 40, then she'll have to pick smarter projects than New in Town. It's a fish-out-of-water comedy formerly known as Chilled in Miami – one of several interesting facts related in a recent New Yorker piece by Tad Friend about movie marketing. The article also poses the age-old question: How do you market a piece of crap? The answer, as ever, is to dress up said crap as something else – in this case, something funny, something sexy, something about the life lessons imparted on a stumbling exec in 4-inch heels (Zellweger) when she arrives in small-town Minnesota to shake up its underproducing factory. It pains me to report that the film – which has a likable enough cast of character actors such as Simmons (Spider-Man) and Conroy (Six Feet Under) and a sufficient leading man in the still-easy-on-the-eyes Connick Jr. – wildly underperforms under the trailer's already low-set expectations: It is not particularly funny or sexy, and those life lessons have little to do with the aggressive folk wisdom of the people of New Ulm, Minn., but rather what happens when a total bitch wakes up and realizes there are human costs to corporate dealings. New in Town might have better played on the less demanding stage of, say, a Lifetime made-for-TV movie, where Elmer's muzzy direction and a script (by C. Jay Cox and Ken Rance) pockmarked with implausibilities would feel slightly less consequential. Still, forgettable films make it to the big screen all the time; what is more rare is a forgettable film about a character written and portrayed so stridently as to be both an irritant and a bore. That character's name, by the way, is Lucy, a fact only recalled after consulting the studio's press notes. Which is telling and may well be New in Town's only real distinction: to have the ability to verily disappear before one's eyes.