HOT PURSUIT

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: F                                     
Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, Robert Kazinsky
and John Carroll Lynch
Written by David Feeney & John Quaintance
Directed by Anne Fletcher
Rated PG-13 (violence, profanity, vulgarity, lame attempts at sensuality that are frankly just sad)

You can laugh at a bad drama. You can howl at a stupid action movie, and you can change color going into hysterical fits of joy with a truly terrible horror film. But with a total misfire comedy, all you can do is pray that the sweet release of death comes swiftly.

Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon stars as Officer Rose Cooper, a female Barney Fife who is the daughter of a decorated Texas cop, but is a laughing stock ever since she was involved in a tasing incident gone awry (because nothing is funnier right now than cops making bad judgement calls on tasing!).

Cooper gets her first real assignment in some time when a drug lord named Felipe Riva is being taken into protective custody so he can testify against an even bigger Columbian drug lord, Vicente Cortez. It seems that a female officer is required to escort Riva's wife, Daniella (Sofia Vergara.).

The minute Cooper and her partner arrive on the scene, things go wrong when multiple parties arrive to kill these potential witnesses, and Cooper's partner is gunned down  (are you laughing yet?)

Cooper escapes with the high maintenance Mrs. Riva, and the when a pair of dirty cops frame them to cover up their own involvement in the attack on Mr. Riva, Cooper and Mrs. Riva end up as fugitives on the run, and Cooper must clear her name while putting up with the other woman's insults and tantrums.

I was not expecting greatness here, but I was expecting if not some genuine laughs, at least a moment that provoked a smile. How wrong can you go with Reese, after all?

But this is all about as funny as a colonoscopy, and much more unpleasant to experience. Witherspoon is giving the laziest performance of her career, anf it's as if she has decided she is in her late 30's and might as well give in and become '90s Goldie Hawn. Vergara, though highly annoying most of the time, at least recognizes this is an important career move for her and tries to inject as much energy and cleavage as she possibly can, but the two actresses don't have enough chemistry to place at a 3rd grade science fair.

This movie is incredibly sexist, and is often offensive in its racial stereotypes. But on the bright side, it moves along at the pace of an asthmatic ant carrying a ton of groceries, and it is surprisingly violent as well.

The best that can be said about Hot Pursuit is that, by comparison, Mordtechai  may almost seem clever.  The worst that can be said is that you may never find Witherspoon cute or endearing again.