First Hit: There was potential for this to be a good film but it fell flat with a misguided script and direction.
Renee Zellweger has proven herself to be an outstanding dramatic (Cold Mountain and Chicago) and comedic actress (Bridget Jones series).
When a film doesn’t know what it wants to be the actors have a difficult time meeting the expectations of the roles. “New In Town” is such a film. It is lost and the director either did a poor interpretation of the script or the script was disjointed, unclear or poorly written.
Renee plays Lucy Hill a hot shot Miami corporate executive sent to Minnesota to re-tool a factory into producing some new energy bar. Arriving in Minnesota from Florida is shocking not only because it is the middle of winter but the lifestyle difference between corporate business and small factory business is so obvious.
The set-up for comedy is available but the overt use of speech cadence and phrasing of people from this small Minnesota town created an unnecessary dumbing down of the town people. This, in-turn, caused me to lose interest in the town and its people. In comparison if you watch Fargo and the use of geographic language particulars and its characters versus the use these in this film, one readily sees an excellent use geographic particulars versus a poor use of them. I don’t think Renee gave her best effort and I’m not sure why but it almost seemed as though she was reading cue cards in some scenes.
Overall: This film shows how to waste good talent and a reasonably good concept.