Hot Pursuit | Review

When Hot is Cold: Fletcher’s Tone Deaf Comedy a Frivolous Altercation

For those familiar with director Anne Fletcher’s studio track record, including the rom-com platitudes of The Proposal (2009) and the broad mother and son road trip comedy The Guilt Trip (2011), it will hardly be surprising to find a similar lack of comical finesse on hand in the shrill insistence of her latest venture, Hot Pursuit. Basically another blacktop jaunt desperately trying to amuse with a countless host of familiar squirming scenarios, television alums David Feeney and John Quintance try to inject their small screen inclined tropes into the old odd couple formula with a surprising lack of success. This had to have been something that seemed like it could have worked thanks to the talent it attracted to headline, but the vehicle serves a complete disserve to its leading ladies, on both content and visual fronts.

We’re introduced to Cooper as a little tyke in the back seat of her dad’s cop car in an opening montage. Introduced to winos, trans prostitutes and a whole gamut of criminal types in her youth, she blossoms into a straight laced adult policewoman (Reese Witherspoon), whose earnestness has caused a significant demotion and difficulty finding a date. Luckily, she’s trustworthy, and so her boss (John Carroll Lynch) assigns her to help Detective Jackson (Richard T. Jones) escort a drug dealer and his wife Daniella (Sofia Vergara) to Dallas because they’re about to testify against a cartel baddie. Except, during the pickup, the dealer and Detective Jackson are killed by the two sets of opposing gunmen that show up at the same time, leaving Cooper to abscond with Daniella and her suitcase full of precious stone lined stilettos. Cooper soon learns that some of her colleagues were partially responsible for the shootout, and so she inadvertently becomes a fugitive as she tries to escort Daniella to her assigned destination. But Daniella isn’t exactly a willing participant in the whole ordeal.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Witherspoon in this kind of dreck, hot off a string of auteur helmed ventures, culminating in an Oscar nod last year for Wild (and producer Bruna Papandrea is on board here as well). Though the scenario makes good use of her petite frame (her height makes her comparable to someone like Veronica Lake), Witherspoon is on screechy overdrive in nearly every sequence, played to the hilt as if her Tracy Flick character from 1999’s Election were to receive a law enforcement retrofit. However, a sequence involving the duo getting air dusted with cocaine sees her somehow managing to over amp herself, even if, like every other set piece, this is played out into tired cliché.

As each gag ends and another familiarity begins, embarrassment begins to set in for the performers, locked into a woefully written scenario that undermines them both from go. Vergara is actually the redeeming feature here (though, to be fair, perhaps expectations are lower). She’s a bushel of the usual stereotypes, but she’s beautiful and charming despite DoP Oliver Stapleton’s sometimes distracting framing. In several of their more physical interactions, Vergara and Witherspoon manage to have an odd charm, but anything they manage to muster is hobbled by the sheer stupidity of the scenario, like when they hide under a faux deer fur to creep through a road block.

Several notable supporting cast members include comedians Mike Birbiglia and Jim Gaffigan mixed in with character actors Richard T. Jones and John Carroll Lynch, all routinely underused. Ungainly, illogical, and most unforgivably unfunny, it is unclear how notable names, Fletcher included, continue to churn out drivel that was clearly neutered at its base concept. Perhaps there is one line that best sums up Hot Pursuit, screamed by one of the cardboard crooked cops during a dangerous car chase sequence. “Oh gosh!”

★/☆☆☆☆☆