Hot Pursuit
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara
Directed by Anne Fletcher
It’s touted as one of the year’s most epic comedy duos teaming up for a wacky adventure, but Hot Pursuit fails miserably and belongs in the bargain basement pile of DVDs at Best Buy. A no-nonsense police officer (Witherspoon) is tasked with protecting the loudmouthed widow (Vergara) of a drug lord in order for her to provide some crucial testimony. Along the way, the pair is pursued by murderous gunmen and crooked cops. The problems begin with David Feeney and John Quaintance’s lukewarm script which squanders the talents of the lead actresses and reduces many of the movie’s gags to pathetic physical comedy and cultural stereotypes. Witherspoon, to her credit, at least attempts to add some gravitas to her character’s generic personality. Vergara, on the other hand, is reduced to squawking like a Colombian Fran Drescher while flaunting her cleavage and is virtually a carbon copy of her persona in TV’s Modern Family.
This film isn’t just flat, it’s exceedingly dull. Despite literally a few chuckle-worthy moments where the comedic gears seem to click, the rest of the tired plot plays out in predictable fashion and one has to wonder if the talented stars realized they were dealing with such shoddy material midway through production. Perhaps the biggest flaw of Hot Pursuit, which exists in a landscape full of funny females, is that despite its claims of being fiercely feminist, the film succumbs to the same tropes that pigeonholed women in comedies for years, essentially setting the whole movement back.
