Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspoon in one movie, sounds like an exciting combo that calls for a celebration. But when an uninspired and lazy script is employed to run the party, the celebration is surely ruined even before it begins.
There is nothing in HOT PURSUIT worth pursuing, and to even try to follow it screechingly run for its pursuit, warrants a mortifying disappointment. This a serious downgrade for both actresses, and it's hard to imagine how dumb the film makers have gone by putting them up to work against an almost empty material.
Witherspoon is an inept police named Cooper, and tries to work all by-the-book. She's assigned to protect the widow (Vergara) of a drug syndicate boss. From the get go, there's nothing between these two that could be summed up to something that bears resemblance to chemistry. It's a ridiculous idea, not just because it doesn't seem to work at the very beginning, but also because of the movie's relentless attempts to make something out of them than can be sensible. Vergara and Witherspoon play characters that are nothing more than predictable and miserably-written. Where these characters are mined, are the same territory where countless other successful comedy outings found their material. But they serve no purpose and do no favor for the performers, as the very structure of the narrative is lazily constructed and uninspired. The result are characters that are too hard to care about. I know a few of these buddy comedies that are never less entertaining, and while it's not totally a bad idea to follow their leads, Hot Pursuit has just horribly failed to trail even the least satisfying entry of the genre. You can't blame the actors, totally, because there is barely something from such bad writing, for them to work out, in the first place. Everything seems misplaced here, the characters, the humor, and all those messed-up action scenes. You would hope for a more sensible ending to come and save it from all those mess, but no, what comes in the end, is only something to top that heap of nonsense and mediocrity. HOT PURSUIT is too lazy and uninspired to be worth a chuckle, that unless you're only up for killing time, there's nothing in it that's worth of recommendation.
