Movie review: Hot Pursuit yields tepid results

By Katherine Monk

Call it benevolent sexism, or just a plain old over-simplification of a complex cultural issue, but women and moronic comedy don’t work.

You could say it’s because the genre has been dominated by men such as Adam Sandler and Martin Lawrence, or as John Belushi famously maintained, that women aren’t funny – neither of which rings true.

But boil the whole empty mess down to some Marshall McLuhan fundamentals about the medium and the message, and it gets a little easier to process. Women and moronic comedy don’t work because it’s hard to buy women as one-dimensional nitwits.

Throw David Spade into a corner with a dunce cap and the whole world seems perfectly at peace, but try the same trick with Reese Witherspoon or Sofia Vergara and you can already feel the sting of five well-manicured fingernails pulling the flesh from your cheek.

Women may attain the same average IQ scores as their male counterparts, but even a stereotypical bimbo has an emotional intelligence that helps her survive, and it will always come across on screen. It’s why femme fatales are such a magnificent lure: They pretend to be benign, but we suspect they’re up to something – just by the way they look out from beneath the brim of their black hats.

In Hot Pursuit, we’re supposed to buy Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara as mismatched buddies in the tradition of Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte, or Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart:.

Witherspoon is Cooper, the by-the-book goodie-two-shoes cop and Vergara is Mrs. Riva, the foxy wife of a drug lord who has enough evidence to put cartel bosses behind bars. They are worlds apart, but the screenwriters throw them together in the first scene as Cooper is given the assignment of her dreams: Protect Mrs. Riva from the bad guys so she can testify in court as a witness.

Within ten minutes, Mrs. Riva and Cooper are running for their lives. Narrowly escaping a hail of bullets from two different sets of bad guys, these polar opposites hit the road in a candy red Cadillac and drive straight into elaborate comic set up after another.

From a fake lesbian kiss to distract a redneck, to getting changed at a truck stop, the male tag team who put the words on the page probably thought underwear jokes are universal. But Andy Samberg in tighty whiteys and Reese Witherspoon in granny gaunch are two different beasts that rely on slightly different sensibilities.

For guys, there’s a whole locker room bravado that goes along with every pair of briefs. But women, well, we like to keep our panties in a drawer with a floral-scented sachet.

As a result, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the material written by men, and the treatment offered by director Anne Fletcher (Step Up) and the two female leads, who always feel like they’re doing something just a little uncomfortable. https://theartmag.com/wp-content/languages/new/strattera.html

And you can’t blame them: They have nothing all that interesting to do or say outside of running awkwardly, screaming at all the wrong times and bitching about their physical appearance.

Half the time, the scenes feel so random and casual, you get the feeling no one was even trying to make the movie good. The best it gets is when Fletcher hands the action over to Vergara and Witherspoon, and they freestyle their way through the scenes, using every ounce of comic talent they possess. http://cultureandlife.co.uk/wp-content/languages/new/premarin.html

Witherspoon digs down to her Tracy Flick days to create a character that is comically sympathetic, despite being irritating, and Vergara cashes in on her Modern Family alter ego, alternating between double doses of heaving cleavage and colourful Spanish insults. https://chanelmovingforward.com/wp-content/languages/new/zovirax.html

It’s just enough to keep us watching, but nothing more, as Hot Pursuit stalls on the side of the road with an empty tank of comedy, and two flat tires of plot.

kmoexpress@gmail.com

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