New in Town

A Miami career woman (Renée Zellweger) is sent to rural Minnesota to close down a small-town plant owned by her conglomerate, but she forms a reluctant affection for the locals, especially the handsome union rep (Harry Connick Jr.). Ken Rance and C. Jay Cox’s script is a formula piece, so cut and dried and predictable that they scarcely bother to give the clichés much conviction, and director Jonas Elmer lays on the you-betcha hick jokes awfully thick in the early scenes. Still, the movie is disarming in spite of itself. It’s good to see Zellweger in a flat-out comedy again (the woeful Leatherheads hardly counts), and she has a nice chemistry with Connick. As Zellweger’s secretary, Saturday Night Live veteran Siobhan Fallon Hogan starts out arch and shallow, but by the end she all but steals the show.