New In Town Movie Review

Urbanites often find it difficult to get out of their comfort zone which happens to be the city they live in. A city sucks peace out of your life and compensates for it by offering you with better infrastructure facilities and availability of technology. Work rate quickens and money flows in faster. But the professionalism of a bustling city leaves no room in your life to actually live it to the fullest. Humanity, unconditional love, innocence are words that seem apt only in a fairy tale… unless, you get to experience it yourself.

Lucy Hill (Renee Zellweger) is an ambitious woman who lives in Miami and works for a food processing giant. She loves her city life but wants to climb the corporate ladder. She thus grabs an opportunity of handling her company’s underperforming branch in New Ulm, Minnesota hoping a promotion sooner.

Once she shifts to her new town, her down-to-earth Minnesotan staff helps her regain humanity. Promotion is no longer the only goal which motivates her to make her branch excel in the business. She even launches a new product on her own when her company plans to shut the branch owing to its continuous bad returns.

New in Town has a sweet story to tell but unfortunately the execution isn’t great enough. Characters and their affection for each other just don’t come across, nor the romantic relationship that Lucy shares with Ted (Harry Connick Jr). Ted happens to be the union leader of the branch, is a widower and lives with his 13 year old girl in New Ulm.

The film evokes a few laughs in few scenes but that’s it. There is nothing extremely comic or romantic or even emotional in this film as is intended by the director.

Renee Zellweger disappoints as she is anything but the charming actress we have seen in Jerry McGuire, Bridget Jones’ Diary and many such beautiful movies. She seems uninvolved and detached from her character. We wonder if its bad make-up or actual signs of ageing but Renee looks haggard! Harry Connick Jr plays his part well but his character itself being poorly sketched he doesn’t have much scope anyways.

The story should ideally make you feel warm and mushy inside but you don’t feel anything when it ends.

How Lucy goes about single-handedly launching the new product and thus saving jobs in the new town – the process itself is missing thus making the film shallow and mediocre.

You can safely give this film a miss…

Cast: Renee Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr

Direction: Jonas Elmer

Genre: Romantic Comedy

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