Hot Pursuit

Directed by Steven Lisberger, Hot Pursuit follows John Cusack’s Dan Bartlett as he attempts to catch up with his girlfriend (Wendy Gazelle’s Lori) and her family on their trip to the Caribbean – with Dan’s efforts inevitably complicated by a whole host of delays and interruptions. There’s little doubt that Hot Pursuit fares much, much better in its first half than in its second, as filmmaker Lisberger, working from a screenplay written with Steven Carabatsos, initially delivers a briskly-paced and often laugh-out-loud funny comedy that benefits substantially from Cusack’s winning work as the beleaguered protagonist – with the movie’s watchable vibe heightened by an emphasis on broadly-conceived yet undeniably amusing sequences and set-pieces. (Everything involving a trio of locals, led by Keith David’s Alphonso, is quite entertaining, for example.) It’s disappointing to note, then, that Hot Pursuit takes a demonstrable turn for the worse as Lisberger abandons the frenetic atmosphere and instead stresses Dan’s increasingly exasperated exploits, with the movie’s shift into a progressively tedious piece of work triggered by a prolonged, comedy-free stretch revolving around Dan’s encounters with a grizzled old sailor (Robert Loggia’s Mac). And although the casting of Ben and Jerry Stiller as the picture’s villains is certainly an amusing novelty, Hot Pursuit ultimately proceeds into an underwhelming (and hopelessly anticlimactic) third act that essentially cements its place as a woefully erratic piece of work – which is a shame, undoubtedly, given the immense potential afforded by a better-than-expected opening half hour.

** out of ****