An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Jonas Elmer.
Cast: Renee Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr, JK Simmons, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Frances Conroy
Description: Ambitious, up and coming executive Lucy Hill always has her eye on the next rung up the career ladder. Sensing that a big promotion is close at hand, Lucy readily agrees to leave behind her beloved Miami for a temporary assignment in snowbound Minnesota, where her talents are required to spearhead the restructuring of an ailing manufacturing plant. In this wintry wilderness, stripped bare of her luxuries, Lucy meets a simple yet charming union representative who teaches her that the true value of life isn't the price tag on the clothes you wear.
Country: US. 2009. 96mins
Smalltown blues: Renée Zellweger as a city executive on a mission in Minnesota
This excruciatingly predictable romantic comedy has Renée Zellweger as Lucy, an ambitious big city executive who is sent to a small town in Minnesota to downsize a manufacturing plant.
You know she’s a bit ditzy because she arrives in the dead of winter without a coat. The temperature is miles below zero, which she could surely have discovered before she went. And so is the hopefully heart-warming nature of Danish director Jonas Elmer’s first Hollywood film.
Apart from the cold, Lucy must face townspeople who speak like they did in the Coen Brothers’ Fargo and are even more naïve. She doesn’t like them and they don’t like her either, especially Harry Connick Jr’s union representative, though you know perfectly well that the two will eventually fall in love.
He instantly forgives her when, having taken her on a blackbird shoot, he gets shot in the buttocks when her rifle goes off as she is taking a pee in the snow.
But that’s not all. Zellweger ultimately falls in love with the whole town when she discovers that even if they are not very sophisticated, they are decent, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth folk. So when she is asked to close the whole plant, she helps them devise a scheme that will save their jobs. It’s making tapioca, of all things.
New In Town is rather like tapioca itself, soggy and virtually tasteless. It’s like a Frank Capra movie with hardened arteries. It is trying to say that country people, even when covered in snow, are more valuable than the city slickers in their air-conditioned offices who have a financial hold on them — so you might think that it is somehow flowing with the times. But it is not.
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It is pie in the sky even to dream that a redundant factory could organise a highly successful business within a month of the intended shutdown.
Having said they are all idiots, it is a bit much to expect them to become clever clogs so soon.
Zellweger does her best to move from nasty townie thruster to sympathetic would-be country bumpkin. But it doesn’t really work and she soon seems to give up trying. The part is hopelessly clichéd from the start.
Connick, JK Simmons (putting on weight and a beard to distinguish him from his part as Juno’s father), Siobhan Fallon Hogan and Frances Conroy do their best but it would take half-a-dozen Oscar-winners to make much of this twaddle. It’s a feelgood movie in feelbad times.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Morning:
13°c
