Beatrix Potter wrote dozens of books with titles like The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes. Released at the turn of the last century, these stories about mischievous animals illustrated with Potter’s charming watercolors were as incredibly popular with kids as Harry Potter is today.
Miss Potter, a new movie starring Oscar winner Renee Zellweger as the author, focuses on Potter’s personal life, which was tumultuous as her books were placid. Buckling against 19th century mores the headstrong writer chose not to marry until age 47, preferring the company of her imaginary friends to real life. The movie leads us through the publishing of her first book, her battles with overbearing social climbing parents, an engagement to her first fiancé, played by Ewan McGregor, and her subsequent retreat to the English countryside. What emerges is an interesting, but incomplete portrait of the legendary writer.
Zellweger is a ringer for Potter, pulls off a convincing English accent, and succeeds in making Potter’s eccentricities seem plausible, but for all the technical aspects of the performance there isn’t much warmth here. Zellweger’s stiff upper lip hides any real emotion, and the few flashes of personality that find their way past her stern façade only hint at the reservoir of emotion underneath.
Overall the movie is well constructed, if a little incomplete. Director Chris Noonan, whose last film, Babe, was eleven years ago, shows us the major events in Potter’s life, but lacking is the passion. It makes for a decent family film, although I doubt that kids will be too taken with the love story and the English reserve, but feels like less than the sum of its parts. Potter was a 19th century rebel who championed the ecology and used her vast wealth to preserve 4000 acres of farmland. She was an active and shrewd marketer of her own books and even did some scientific research on lichens that, one hundred years after she wrote it, was given credence by the British Linnean Society. Only mildly engaging, this stiff Masterpiece Theatre treatment of her life doesn’t do justice to Beatrix Potter or her legacy.
New in Town is a romantic comedy in the mould of every other romantic comedy made since Harry met Sally all those years ago. The genre is so familiar that saying upfront that Renee and Harry end up in a clinched embrace as the credits roll isn’t a spoiler, it’s a given. The trick with these kinds of movies is to make the journey, how the unlikely couple gets together, different and interesting.
Renée Zellweger is Lucy Hill, a Miami based business consultant sent to oversee the restructuring of a manufacturing plant in the snowy Minnesota town of New Ulm. She’s a fish out of water that’s never seen snow up close and personal and thinks that you light a fireplace with a switch on the wall. “I’m stranded in this frozen wasteland,” she says. She looks down on the townsfolk and their quaint Fargo-esque accents and is determined to do her job and “not get personally attached to this town or anybody in it.” Her icy attitude begins to melt as she warms up to Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick Jr.) a handsome local man. Then when she’s ordered to close down the plant and put the entire community out of work, she’s forced to re-evaluate her big-city values.
To freshen things up the screenwriters have set the action in Minnesota, perhaps the least sexy of all 50 states. Any list of dream rom com locations begins with New York, is rounded out by Paris with London coming in a close third. The good state of Minnesota is unlikely to make the cut, and unfortunately New In Town won’t do much to change that state of affairs.
Actually shot in Manitoba, the film is placed against a backdrop of snow and ice, only occasionally finding a modicum of warmth as the relationship between Renee and Harry heats up, and even then its predictability is likely to leave you as cold as the setting.
The location isn’t the movie’s only problem. Early on it’s clear that there aren’t any characters here, just clichés. The people of New Ulm are the kind of stereotypical small town folks that only exist on the big screen. They’re unsophisticated gullible rubes, too nice for their own good and prone to colorful phrases like “Oh for cryin’ in a beer cheese soup.” (I don’t know what it means either….)
Zellweger is a cold blooded shark in Manolo Blahniks, a stuck up city snob straight from Central Casting. Connick isn’t required to much more than smile and look rugged in his plaid shirts. At least he pulls off the smile.
Most shocking is J.K. Simmons as plant foreman Stu Kopenhafer. Simmons is a great character actor who was the best and funniest thing in Burn After Reading, the most recent Coen Brothers film, but this is the most blatant “for the paycheck role” of the year so far.
Couple clichéd characters with predictable situations and you have New In Town, a forgettable movie that will raise the occasional laugh from generous audiences, but is probably best regarded as a rental.
Down with Love is an homage to the 1960’s Rock Hudson / Doris Day “battle of the sexes” sub-genre. The filmmakers have captured the look – Renee Zellweger’s clothes look like they were just uncrated from a time-capsule discovered in Jackie O’s closet circa 1963 – but falter when it comes to the tone of the film. The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead, if you know what I mean. The actors, likeable though they may be, have none of the ease that Hudson and Day had with this sort of material. The kitsch-o-meter is dialled up to 10, but only Ms. Zellweger’s impressive speech near the end where she reveals her elaborate plot to snare the lusty Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) has the sense of campy fun that this whole film desperately needs to succeed. Down with Love tries hard, but is winking so firmly at itself, it threatens to give itself a black eye.
Ron Howard’s mostly true story of Jim Braddock is a depression era Rocky. It follows Braddock’s career from his early days as a contender for a light-heavy weight title through to the dark Depression years when injuries and age prevented him from making a living in the ring right up to his amazing comeback in the ring when he became a symbol for courage in a country “that had been brought to its knees.” This is a big, good looking movie that seems to scream Oscar, except that it is a bit too long and relies too heavily on boxing movie clichés that we have seen before. The performances, however, are quite good. Paul Giamatti plays Braddock’s manager Joe Gould with a lot of energy, while Renee Zellweger redefines the term “mousey” in her portrayal of Braddock’s wife Mae. At the heart of the movie is Russell Crowe who shines as the humble, but driven Braddock. Crowe could be nominated for Best Actor for just one scene in this movie–where he goes back to a club frequented by his old boxing associates to beg for money from his former friends to pay his electrical bill.
More than any other film genre romantic comedy suffers from a bad case of predictability. How many times have we seen two unlikely people beat the odds to become a happy couple by the time the credits roll? Dorky Harry meets beautiful Sally. Pretty Woman of the Night seduced by suave rich guy.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
The trick to making a good rom-com is to make the journey — how the characters wind up locking lips at the film’s end — interesting.
New In Town, the latest from Renée Zellweger does this by moving the action out of New York, where all great romantic comedies are set, to Minnesota.
This location twist is often used in the most common type of romantic comedy, the trademarked Drew Barrymore rom-com. On film Drew has fallen in love in Hawaii (50 First Dates), Boston (Fever Pitch) and everywhere in between.
The breakdown for a Barrymore romance is simple. Act One sees the quirky couple meet. Sparks fly. Act Two has the pair falling in love under unlikely circumstances. Things go great until a confrontation leads to separation. Act Three contains the Grand Gesture. He or she, depending on the movie, moves heaven and earth to win the other back. Insert happy ending.
Barrymore, of course, isn’t to blame for the state of rom-coms. Neither is Kate or Reese. They’re just mimicking an age old formula.
Trouble in Paradise, an Ernst Lubitsch classic from 1932, follows the structure and it could be argued that Shakespeare was the architect of the rom-com.
So why, after half a millennium, do romantic comedies still thrill audiences? I think it’s primal. Deep down we all love a happy ending and while real life relationships might not always work, it’s assured that when Harry meets Sally, it will be forever. That kind of certainty, no matter how unreal, keeps us coming back for more.
