Never at a loss for finding ways to disappoint us, Hot Pursuit is utterly devoid of a basis in anything resembling reality. Unfortunately, a comedy depends of plausibility every bit as much as a drama. Thus, this new Reese Witherspoon/Sophia Vergara female buddy flick becomes fatally unfunny almost as soon as it begins.
Officer Cooper (Witherspoon) or “My Little Pony,” “the pencil-top gnome,” or “the tiny little weird robot” as Daniella Rivera (Vergara) will come to call her, is assigned to escort the blustery Rivera, wife of a mob associate, to testify against her husband’s boss. The police protection she provides is every bit by the book since Cooper spends much of her screen time monotonously reciting various numerical police codes.
Then there’s the running gag that every time the two women run into a TV or radio report about themselves, the on-air reporters list Cooper’s height as progressively shorter and Rivera’s age as increasingly higher. It was almost funny the first time but director Anne Fletcher runs the joke into the ground. Similar to the police codes bit, just about everything goes on too long or crash lands into a cliche. Fast-talking Cooper becomes a veritable cartoonish motor-mouth once Rivera’s convertible blows up, sending the many kilos of cocaine hidden in the car into the air and into Cooper’s lungs.
Unfunny comedies are rampant these days but repellant ones are a rarer breed. Something about two usually fine actresses slogging through material this lame thwarts even the virtually automatic laughs Vergara can eke out of almost any role with her eyes closed. It’s not even as if Witherspoon and Vergara wrangled a paycheck at the expense of compensating for the lack of quality mature women’s roles theses days. They both executive produced so they have themselves to blame.