New in Town: Critic Reviews

It pains me to admit, and I may be distinctly in the minority here, but I really liked this film.

How much do I want to believe in America 2.0 as a place where a Suit might help factory workers survive hard times?

The flat romantic comedy New in Town has no idea of how to play its cards.

Renee Zellweger's rabbity, dimply pout - surely the strangest facial expression in Hollywood - simpers and twitches out of the screen in this moderate girly flick that adheres with almost religious fanaticism to the feelgood romcom handbook.

It follows a particularly abhorrent Hollywood formula: Ridicule the friendly, rural folks, show how stupid they are, then by the end, place their small-town values and inherent decency on a pedestal.

There's nothing novel about this overly familiar farce.

You've seen New in Town before, and you've seen it done better.

The movie wrong-foots Zellweger from the start.

A romantic comedy that's neither romantic nor funny.

The month of January has come to be known as a graveyard for bad movies, but how bad can it get? This one answers the question.

It's meant to be a winsome romantic comedy, which might have been able to reach its destiny if it didn't have to chop its way through a thicket of stereotypes and bad jokes.

Am I giving too much away? This is the kind of movie that gives itself away.

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

The laughs and emotional moments are so weak that director Jonas Elmer has no choice but to tweak them with music cues and bland guitar-rock.

New in Town is so choppy that it would seem to have been edited with a pickax.

The film squeezes every ounce of sweet-tempered comic potential from brutal windchill, Lutheran reticence and white-bread cuisine.

Yes, this movie offers dumb hope in wretched times, but for many, dumb hope is preferable to no hope at all.

New in Town is a perfectly dreadful movie. You end up really reaching if you try to pinpoint the film's redeeming qualities.

The comedy is harmless as a farm-fresh egg, sunny side up and runny in the middle. Pleasant enough going down, but an hour after breakfast you can't remember what it tasted like.

Because every development in New in Town is so predictable, so reminiscent of other, better romantic comedies, it actually seems longer than it is.

With the recession getting worse by the day, it's asking an awful lot for audiences to laugh at a romantic comedy centering on corporate layoffs.