I’ll admit it, going into this film I was pretty nervous. 2015 has been a good year for films and halfway through the year, I’m already conflicted over what my Top Ten films are going to be.
Yes, I was nervous, because at some point Third Act Film is going to come to me and ask for a Worst 5 Films of 2015 list and I’m not sure I’ll be able to fill it. I mean sure, Adam Sandler’s Pixels is coming out soon and even with Peter Dinklage adding talent, you can usually rely on a Sandler comedy to drop trousers and s*** all over your movie going experience. But still, by luck or good judgement, I am desperately short of truly bad films this year.
Silly of me to worry really.
Hot Pursuit stars Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara in what I will reluctantly describe as a “film” (although, interestingly, it does match the description of a human rights violation), about a by the book cop who is escorting the wife of a drug informant to testify in court. Various people try to kill her and the comedy duo go on the run, where wackiness ensues.
It took a lot of effort to reduce that down to one set of quotation marks.
I’ve said this before but comedies really ought to be funny, and in Hot Pursuit there were a couple of scenes that earnt a half smile but otherwise I was left to watch the tumbleweed drift though a silent cinema screen. Comedy is obviously a personal preference but dear God shouldn’t somebody have laughed?
The jokes were lazy and clich?d, the acting sub-par, the plot laughable and in some scenes I was actually embarrassed to be in the cinema. There was no real chemistry between the two leads, to the extent that Hot Pursuit felt awkward and uncomfortable to watch. Vergara, I can kind of understand – she isn’t all that big in films and any role has to help but Witherspoon? Oscar Winning Reece Witherspoon? I can’t understand why she is trying to turn herself into the female Adam Sandler, a one-time comedic star, capable of turning out excellent dramatic roles who now churns out c*** comedy after c*** comedy, that nobody likes.
On the positive side………..uh…………it was thankfully quite short?
In the end this was a film that I had low expectations for going in and yet it somehow failed to achieve even those. If it weren’t for the fact that it stars Witherspoon, I suspect it would have gone straight to video.
