Hot Pursuit gets the cold shoulder
Drab road film long on boob, height jokes
“Armed and sort of dangerous”? That was the best they could do for a tagline? How about: “One busts crime; the other’s crime is a bust”? Too crass? You won’t think so if you sit through Hot Pursuit, a truly tasteless comedy featuring the otherwise talented Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara.
Witherspoon is five feet and one inch. Vergara is 42 (years) and 32 inches (F cup). This is the source of 90 per cent of the humour as crafted by TV writers John Quaintance and David Feeney, and spoonfed to us by director Anne Fletcher. The other 10 per cent comes from the fact that Vergara speaks a foreign language that apparently no one else in Texas understands.
Witherspoon is Cooper, a second-generation cop so tightly coiled that if you tapped her on the shoulder she’d ring like a bell.
Relegated to the evidence room as the result of a Taser mishap that led to her name being used as a verb — you’ve been Coopered — she’s given a chance to redeem herself when a notorious drug cartel leader is arrested, and a potential witness needs protection.
Unfortunately, the witness doesn’t last long enough to get his day in court, but his wife, Daniella (Vergara), escapes. Cooper is determined to keep her alive at least.
What follows is a drab road movie in which Vergara constantly makes fun of Witherspoon’s height, femininity and policing skills — calling her “Meester Churlocks Holmes” is a typical barb. Witherspoon, meanwhile, disparages the other’s lack of morality and excess of chestal area, though I’m not sure why that’s such a bad thing. In between exchanges of lame dialogue come exchanges of lame gunfire.
Each character is given the minimum backstory to qualify as a character. Cooper’s you know. Daniella’s is that her brother was once killed by a cop. Also, did I mention she speaks Spanish?
The two women meet up with a redneck (comedian Jim Gaffigan) from whom they can only escape by pretending to be lesbians and thus distracting him. They also meet an excon (Robert Kazinsky), presumably to prove that Cooper is indeed straight.
There’s so much less to say about this film, so perhaps it’s best if we leave it there. In the movies, there’s always a good cop and a bad cop. There’s seldom a truly awful cop. Hot Pursuit proves that seldom doesn’t mean never.