New In Town

Directed by Jonas Elmer, New In Town follows ambitious executive Lucy Hill (Renée Zellweger) as she travels to a small Minnesota town to oversee the restructuring of a food manufacturing plant – with Lucy’s eventual (and inevitable) softening, which is triggered by her growing affection for a blue-collar local (Harry Connick Jr.’s Ted), threatening the success of her efforts. It’s an incredibly familiar and generic premise that is, at the outset, employed to less-than-promising effect by Elmer, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by C. Jay Cox and Ken Rance, delivers a paint-by-numbers romcom that’s been suffused with some of the genre’s hoariest cliches and conventions – with, especially, the protagonist’s far-from-surprising character arc ranking high on the movie’s list of eye-rollingly obvious attributes. There’s little doubt, then, that New In Town does manage to win the viewer over as it progresses into its comfortable, affable midsection, and it’s clear, certainly, that the picture’s mild success is due almost entirely to the cast’s exceedingly appealing work – with Zellweger’s likeable turn as the central character heightened by her chemistry with Connick Jr.’s Ted and her ongoing interactions with assorted townspeople. (J.K. Simmons’ appearance as a crusty local remains an obvious highlight, to be sure.) The protracted yet satisfying final stretch ultimately cements New In Town‘s place as a decent-enough romantic comedy that could’ve been a whole lot worse, which is rather surprising, to put it mildly, given the decidedly underwhelming bent of the film’s opening half hour.

**1/2 out of ****