Hot Pursuit 'Not in Any Way Worth Watching'

Any shot Hot Pursuit had at becoming this summer's hottest comedy has flown out the window thanks to what can only be described as some of the worst reviews we've seen in a while. The flick starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara has managed just a 7% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes as of this posting. And so, let the bashing begin:

• Brad Wheeler immediately asks, "What was she thinking?" referring to Witherspoon's decision to play a "cornball and annoyingly adrenalized" cop after wowing critics in Wild. "A year ago she was back at the top of her game, and now she's headed south," he writes at the Globe and Mail. While "the wackiness isn't completely without charm," he says the flick is "a zany piece of comic landfill" filled with nonstop lesbian jokes.
• Simply put, Hot Pursuit is "ill-conceived, not funny, overbearing, and not in any way worth watching," writes Claudia Puig at USA Today. There's no chemistry between the movie's stars and no jokes to keep them occupied, she writes, putting most of the blame on screenwriters David Feeney and John Quaintance. Puig concludes the flick is "a stone-cold, super-lazy sitcom version" of 2013's The Heat.

• The film is "almost entirely unsure of how to go about being funny," writes AO Scott at the New York Times. "We are in the midst of a comedy boom, and within it an explosion of feminist and woman-driven humor, but the news has apparently not reached Warner Bros. headquarters." He says his high hopes for the flick were dashed. "But while a movie that fails to catch fire is disappointing, there is something even more dispiriting about a movie that doesn't even bother to try."
• Still feel like you might want to see for yourself? Betsy Sharkey hopes to talk you off that ledge. Hot Pursuit seems "destined to become a late-night punch line" and deals "one humiliation after another," she writes at the Los Angeles Times. "It's so bad it will go down as Academy Award-winning Witherspoon's worst movie, at least for the foreseeable future" and "will keep Modern Family star Vergara locked up tight in her sexy over-the-top Colombian comedian cliché box."

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