Movie Breakdown: Hot Pursuit (Noah)
People are doing traditional-style reviews all over the web, so we decided to try something different. In each “breakdown” we’ll take a look at what a film’s marketing led us to believe, how the movie actually played, and then what we learned from it all. Read on!
The Impression:
If there was an apocalyptic event and every theater and film on Earth was caught up in a fiery windstorm and the only bit of celluloid remaining to be viewed by the denizens of this dark, hellish version of reality was Hot Pursuit, based on the previews, I’d still probably skip it.
The Reality:
Hot Pursuit is somehow both a generic, odd-couple-buddy-comedy as well as a total tonal mess that features almost good performances by actors way better than the script that someone wrote while in the bathroom. The film follows Officer Cooper (Reese Witherspoon), the daughter of a famed police officer, who’s followed in his path but after a shameful tazer incident has been relegated to the evidence room. She ends up, through a variety of totally unbelievable circumstances, on the run with Danielle Riva, a Cartel wife who’s state witness husband has been murdered. The rest of the film is pretty much just a modge-podge of “Reese Witherspoon is short” jokes, “Sofia Vergara is a sassy Mexican” jokes, and then the sort of half-ass pratfalls that now define modern comedy. It is, aside from the dynamic between Vergara and Witherspoon (which at times feels unforced – the best I can say about anything in this film), an awful movie, a shitty comedy to start but one that veers down a road of tonal muddling before crash landing on the runway of mediocrity. It’s a bad flick – badly filmed, lazily written, a pure squandering of its stars talents – and its a film that always sits precariously on the line of offensiveness. I think if any other actor aside from Vergara, who is surprisingly good in it, was given the role of the screechy, “Latina” wife, there’d be a big bag of “fuck you” letters coming from more than a few viewers. So, yeah, don’t watch this.
The Lesson:
Americans are really easily amused by bad sexual humor. At one point during the film, for less then ten seconds, an attractive woman talks like a man. My theater ate it up. Thanks pilgrims.
