New In Town

Ten minutes into New in Town, sitting in a heated (thankfully) auditorium in Leominster on Friday afternoon, I began to ask myself the question: "Why exactly does this movie suck so bad? Is it the direction, or is it the editing?"

After watching carefully for a couple more scenes, it hit me that it was definitely the direction, by Jonas Elmer, directing his first Hollywood movie. Every scene was awkward. You could see it on the actors faces as they stood next to each other, almost if they didn't know what exactly to express to each other, or what exactly to do. It must have been painful at times for them.

The story is about a high-powered Miami-based corporate executive (Renee Zellweger) who winds up having to manage a food plant in New Ulm, Minnesota. When she first flies up there, it is the dead of winter and she is defeated repeatedly by the bitter cold and snow.

Actually it wasn't the dead of winter, but early November. Nevertheless southern Minnesota was frozen like mid-January, with the lakes solid enough to drive on. I remember some chilly Halloweens in northwestern Iowa, but nothing like that. Go figure. This is probably why the movie had to be shot in Manitoba.

The Fargo-like cornball cultural references---the Minnesota Vikings, glockenspiels, braunschweig, etc---came rolling a mile a minute, almost in every line of dialogue in the first twenty minutes. I felt like I was being force fed from a church picnic potluck of jello salad and cole slaw.

But then something started to happen---the movie started to develop a story. The young high-powered woman is single, and this being a romantic comedy, we know she will meet a nice young man (Harry Connick Jr.) who will be the love or her life. Falling in love will take the edge off her bitchy personality and allow her to relate to other people in ways that transcend market-speak and cut-throat ambition. Likewise her hatred for Minnesota and its chilly winters will be turned to appreciation as she falls in love.

This being 2009, the two characters start off hating each other. These days, we know that such animosity is a sign that they are meant for each other. The framing story involves the fate of the food plant. She has been sent there to downsize it, and eventually she learns that the corporate suits want to shut the whole thing down altogether.

She has to figure out a way to save the plant. We know she will, and the resolution to the corporate drama will arrive with the resolution to the love story. Suitably she will need to make a sacrifice in order to achieve the result that will be happy not only for her, but for everyone (such sacrifice is a very classical element).

What surprised me was how much I began to enjoy the corporate story, which included many interesting topical issues for 2009. The Minnesota cornball jokes having subsided, I began to actually start rooting for the movie to succeed.

In economic terms, it was definitely an "underdog vs. greedy scum" movie, with a dash of healthy class warfare. It began to remind me a little bit of the kind of movies that Preston Sturges made during the Great Depression, at least in terms of its storyline. We didn't have to swallow an ending where the workers and the suits all get to shake hands and triumph, since in 2009 we know that means that the suits really won, and will shaft the workers at some later date. There was even a bit of Marxist flavor to how it all ended. I hope Hollywood starts making a lot more movies like this. It's about time.

As a whole, the flawed movie was a great demonstration of the power of narrative. That is, even if a movie has a sub-par screenplay and clumsy direction (which this one did), if it nevertheless has an interesting and compelling story (and good acting, which this also did) than it will still be watchable.

Another little tidbit I liked about New in Town was the appearance of one of my favorite long-standing movie phenomena, which I call the Magic Cow of Happiness. Among other things, the Magic Cow often shows up in romantic comedies in order to point the hero or heroine in the direction of his or her true love. I could write a dissertation on that, if I ever went to film school. Moooooooo!