Sarentrol Masterful Cinema

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

kdrice-33520 This is a sweet film about community, kindness and personal transformation. When a Miami-based driven woman headed for the C-suite lands in Minnesota, she has some lessons to learn about life and what it means to be human. The story's conflict and romance work well. It's so nice to see a film that's not full of violence, terror or sex. Love it!

native-vermont I don't get why this movie is rated so low. Maybe it's funnier if you grew up in a small town? It's got a good premise, it was well written, and the acting was pretty good, too. Some of the characters are just FUNNY! For me, Blanche and Harv provided the most laughs. The chemistry between Renee Zelweger and Harry Connick, Jr. built slowly and you could definitely see it coming from their first scene, but this is one of those movies where the supporting actors were the real stars. But I must say that Renee Zelweger did better than I thought she would. She was believable as the Florida corporate executive relegated to a cold, snowy Minnesota winter.WHO WILL LIKE THIS MOVIE: - Parents - Kids (both my teen daughters love it) - Residents of Northern Tier states - Those who grew up in or enjoy small townsWHO WILL NOT LIKE THIS MOVIE: - Corporate board members who take their jobs too seriously. - Residents of large cities who don't understand small town life. - Canadians and Minnesotans who are too critical of being imitated. - People with no sense of humor.

jarten1 Funny, charming and romantic. My wife and I both liked this movie a lot. Cannot understand why it was not better received. Great cast and by the way did I mention that it was FUNNY! Not only a good movie, but much better than the formula.There are no car chases or much in the way of special effects, but there is a lot of heart. Cast was uniformly excellent. J K Simmons did a great job as did the entire cast. I had not heard anything about this movie until my wife found it while changing channels. We tivoed it and watched it a second time and it was just as good if not better. We even liked it enough to buy the DVD so we don't have to ff through the commercials and hopefully see whatever the broadcaster took out.

MBunge Just as a Random Number Generator is put to use in statistics and cryptography, Hollywood seems to employ a Random Romantic-Comedy Generator to churn out fluff like New In Town. For this one, they set the generator to bland and pushed the "Minnesota people are funny" button to produce a shallow and erratic but marginally amusing film that is entirely supporting by the subjective charms of Renee Zelwegger. If you like her, you won't mind this. If Zelwegger grates on you, watching this movie will feel like being dragged at high speed over a gravel road.Lucy Hill is a corporate executive from Miami dispatched during winter to a plant in New Ulm, Minnesota to handle its retooling for a new product line and the elimination of half the workforce. She arrives to meet a colorful cast of small town characters, including a handsome and abrasive union leader (Harry Connick Jr.). In a development that won't surprise any living thing on Earth, including the bacteria living in my commode, Lucy falls in love with both the townspeople and the union rep and when her bosses announce they're shutting down the plant entirely, she has to find a way to salvage both the livelihood of the community and her budding relationship.Now, I like Zelwegger so I found New In Town to be Perfectly Acceptable Entertainment. Yes, it's predictable and obvious and unoriginal and stumbles from one rom-com cliché to another without any structure or direction. Lucy Hill is a cipher, her love interest is practically an absentee character and the only reason the two of them wind up together is because there's literally no one else in the story they could be with. But there's nothing jaw-droppingly stupid about any of the plot, none of the characters have to act like compete and total morons to keep the story going and there are persistent attempts at humor through the whole thing. As chick flicks go, this is not a pain to sit through.The Random Romantic-Comedy Generator did manage to spit out a couple of interesting concepts, but they go criminally underutilized. Early on it's established that the workforce at the plant has made a habit of running mangers out of town and there are moments when New In Town almost wanders into a more lively and unexpected story about the conflict between an ambitious executive who cares only about her career and the subversively devious employees who don't take kindly to outsiders telling them how to run "their" plant. There's also a second where it seems like the movie might use scrapbooking as a metaphor of the difference between small town permanence and the disposable world of on-the-go corporate existence. Neither of those opportunities are recognized or taken advantage of.If you hate rom-coms and/or Zelwegger with a passion, this motion picture is not for you. If you like either or both, New In Town will be an okay way to kill 97 minutes. You know which group you belong to.