New in Town Movie Review. Renee Zellweger stars as 'Lucy Hill' in NEW IN TOWN. Photo credit: Rebecca Sandulak.

"New in Town" is "The Pajama Game" without the songs, the laughs or the bare-knuckled realism.

It stars Renee Zellweger and her blinding-snowstorm smile as Lucy Hill, a hotshot Miami businesswoman whose firm assigns her to oversee a 50 percent workforce reduction at a food-processing plant in New Ulm, Minn.

Talk about culture shock.

The people there are all recent graduates of a Bad Minnesota Dialect workshop, and they're not afraid to "drag Jesus into regular conversation," as Lucy's secretary, Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), informs Lucy.

Wait a minute -- did you say Gunderson?

You mean, like Marge and Norm Gunderson of "Fargo," a film that had both its wit and its wits about it, as opposed to the watery romantic comedy served up here? Is it some sort of law you have to name a Minnesota movie character Gunderson?

The script shuffles the central relationships of "The Pajama Game."

If you recall that brash and likable 1954 Broadway musical, or its film version, the story involved a Cedar Rapids newbie, the (male) factory foreman, squaring off against the female union rep.

"New in Town" goes the other way: female boss, male union rep. Chic, brittle Lucy finds herself in the land of 10,000 hideous wallpaper patterns, and she's barely off the plane when she insults the local union rep, played by easygoing Harry Connick Jr. He's a widower raising a daughter on his own and serves as Lucy's entry point into this land of good Christian folk who sound as if they're the heart and soul of Minne-SO-OH-OH-OH-ta, but in fact the project was filmed in Manitoba, where the tax breaks make Minnesota's look sick.

Why are romantic comedies so hard to get right?

Partly, it's because screenwriters put not-quite-human caricatures into human scenarios and strand them without funny things to say.

As conceived by writers Kenneth Rance and C. Jay Cox, Lucy is pure hostile ineptitude. She's not much fun as a heroine, and while she's meant to be a cool, sharklike corporate achiever in need of human warmth, the movie condescends to her all the way through. Likewise "New in Town" exploits Midwest heartland stereotypes even as it wags a finger in the face of those who would dare to make fun of these people.

It's too bad, because Zellweger can be a game comedian given half a chance.

She needs better gags, however, than a protracted bit involving freezing temperatures and women's nipples, or the buckshot-in-the-keister bit (lifted from "Bird on a Wire," to name another rom-com you'll have trouble naming in a year or two). When the factory's future is threatened, Lucy's transformation into caring friend of the worker doesn't wash.

Frustratingly, the film comes alive for 10 minutes or so midway.

When Zellweger and Connick settle in for a nice, pre-smooch conversation, the performers visibly relax, and "New in Town" suddenly feels like a film about people getting to know each other on a planet resembling Earth, instead of "Norma Rae Doncha Know."

 

New in Town MPAA rating: PG (for language and some suggestive material).

Running time: 1:36.

Starring: Renee Zellweger (Lucy Hill); Harry Connick Jr. (Ted Mitchell); J.K. Simmons (Stu Kopenhafer); Siobhan Fallon Hogan (Blanche Gunderson); Frances Conroy (Trudy Van Uuden).

Directed by Jonas Elmer; written by Kenneth Rance and C. Jay Cox; photographed by Chris Seager; edited by Troy Takaki; music by John Swihart; production designed by Dan Davis; produced by Paul Brooks, Darryl Taja, Tracey Edmonds and Peter Safran. A Columbia Pictures release.

 

New in Town Movie Review - Renee Zellweger & Harry Connick Jr. star in the movie "New in Town"