The timing couldn't have been better for a romantic comedy with a love-among-the-financial-ruins theme to come along. But if you're looking for a welcome mat for "New in Town," you won't find it here.
The new comedy starring Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr. is flat, the romance is listless, the pacing is sluggish, and the fish-out-of-water flops -- flip-flop, flip-flop, I can hear it still.
Set in the ice-encrusted Minnesota outback where business at a small town's major employer, a yogurt plant, is souring, "New in Town" comes with a high relatability factor. After all, who can't identify with the hard economic times now that have companies shedding employees as fast as a longhaired cat in summer?
Zellweger is Lucy Hill, the fast-rising, designer-suited ex- ecutive from Miami who jets in to make the plant more "efficient" -- though in the real world, of course, most big-time corporate downsizers are white, male and patently unattractive, but that's just a minor quibble. We know right away that Lucy is out of her element in tiny New Ulm because even though she's very smart -- we see her saying important things in boardrooms filled with executives -- she shows up in the dead of a Minnesota winter wearing stilettos and a pencil skirt.
Union leader Ted, a very scruffy Harry Connick Jr. (nothing says Minnesota like unruly beards and flannel, I guess) is right there to let her know she's got a battle on her hands and it starts with him. They spar, but somehow you just know these kids are going to get together. Along the way, Lucy gets in touch with her inner small town, which means good old-fashioned American values of friendship, community and the dignity of hard work (think Sarah Palin campaign).
All of which can be absolutely charming in the right hands, as "Baby Boom" more than aptly proved in the great long-ago of 1987; at least back then when Diane Keaton left New York for Vermont, her type-A "tiger lady" had the good sense to buy a winter coat and boots, thank you Nancy Meyers.
As much as she is confounded by the ice and snow, Lucy is also confused by the warm embrace of the community women, as her execu- tive assistant and the town's most dedicated scrapbooker, Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) scoops her up, determined to see that Lucy finds God and a boyfriend. The best moments are in the plant or around Blanche's kitchen table, the places where the film manages some level of authenticity.
