New in Town

In the dreadful New in Town, Renée Zellweger plays a cutthroat corporate executive who moves to a Minnesota hellmouth with the intention of slashing jobs at the local factory, but against all objective onscreen evidence, finds herself charmed by the town’s slack-jawed inhabitants. It’s the classic Hollywood dynamic—the small-town Minnesotans are mocked as small-minded buffoons (they have a psychotic fixation on tapioca, if only because saying the word emphasizes the actors’ cartoonish portrayals of a Northwestern accent), yet the heroine still yearns to give up her posh life in Miami to relocate to their snowy shithole. Harry Connick Jr. plays the union-leader love interest (she likes wine, he likes beer … they’re hilariously incompatible!), but the only tension comes when Zellweger attempts to form a facial expression.