What was Renee Zellweger thinking? I mean, this is the woman who brought us Ruby in Cold Mountain, Roxie in Chicago, even Bridget Jones – twice. I mean, she’s not Judy Dench or anything, but we’ve seen her stretch herself as an actress before, so why, oh why, oh why did she choose New in Town as a star vehicle? I can only think that Christina Applegate dropped out due to her chemo treatments – and she would have completely owned this part, turning it into something worthy (if not quite sublime.) But Renee? Give me a break.
The plot – such as it is – is that she’s a Miami-based career woman sent to wildest Minnesota in mid-winter to restructure a food processing plant. Of course she comes to love it and the townsfolk and the hairy trucker who’s the love interest. JK Simmons is in there too somewhere. Say wha???????
New In Town is not a bad film, per se, it’s just that it’s so utterly, perplexingly ordinary. Selkirk, Manitoba did stand in for New Ulm, Minnesota.