New in Town doesn’t know what type of movie it wants to be. During part of the film it wants to be a fish-out-of-water tale of a girl who discovers her true self and saves a small industrial town. It also seems to want to be a traditional romantic comedy. At the end of the day it is a confused movie that wants to be Norma Rae meets City Slickers with a little Fargo thrown in for good measure. To put it bluntly, the movie is a mess.
Renée Zellweger is Lucy Hill, an executive for a food company who is relocated to a small town in Minnesota to restructure the manufacturing plant there, downsizing the staff in the process. The jokes are cheap and predictable when she arrives. She packs too much, finds the weather too cold and is dumbstruck by the town’s preoccupation with scrapbooking and Jesus.
Zellweger is fine in her portrayal of the city girl lost in a strange land but it is a role that has been seen too many times before better. Whether it is Mr. Deeds or even Coming to America, the fish-out-of-water concept has a been there, done that feeling and New in Town never attempts to add anything fresh to the proceedings.
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Over the year’s many films have attempted to be the next Rashomon. Films such as Memento, The Usual Suspects and Ghost Dog have paid homage to the classic Kurosawa film with success. Even animated films took a stab at the form with the 2005 movie Hoodwinked!. If you throw every film that has tried to mimic Rashomon into a barrel, Legacy would be the one scraping the bottom of the pile.
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