Susan Granger’s review of “Hot Pursuit” (Warner Bros.)
It’s truly pathetic when the out-take bloopers during the end credits are more amusing than any scenes in the shoddy film – and they’re not even all that funny.
Petite Reese Witherspoon (“Legally Blonde”) and statuesque Sofia Vergara (TV’s “Modern Family”) are beautiful, gifted comediennes, so why they wasted their energy and talent on this vacuous, buddy/odd couple-comedy is a profound mystery.
Uptight, overly-eager Officer Rose Cooper (Witherspoon) is a by-the-book, second-generation San Antonio cop who has a lot to prove when she gets her first chance in the field after impulsively tasering the mayor’s unarmed teenage son who yelled, “I got shotgun,” because he wanted dibs on the front passenger seat of the car.
She’s assigned to escort feisty Danielle Riva (Vergara), the sassy, soon-to-be-widowed wife of a Colombian drug dealer, to court in Dallas to testify in front of a grand jury against a major drug kingpin (Joaquin Cosio). But before they can leave the Riva home, two different sets of assassins appear: gun-toting mobsters and crooked cops.
So the women ‘borrow’ a nearby convertible and take off. After a Texas APB is issued for their capture, they’re really on-the-lam – with some questionable ‘baking powder’ in the trunk of the car.
Recklessly written by David Feeney (TV’s “2 Broke Girls”) and John Quaintance (TV’s “Ben and Kate”) and sluggishly directed by Anne Fletcher (“The Guilt Trip,” “27 Dresses”), it’s utterly contrived and their bickering is so weak and formulaic that it often comes across as desperate.
Obviously, they were vainly attempting to recreate the combustible chemistry generated in “The Heat” (2013), an action-comedy which teamed Sandra Bullock with Melissa McCarthy. Adding insult to injury, Witherspoon and Vergara cavort, clinch and lip-lock in the un-sexiest lesbian scene in history.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Hot Pursuit” is a lame, tedious 3. It’s cringe-worthy.
