Hot Pursuit (12A)
Directed by Anne Fletcher
2/5

NEVER have two leading ladies worked this hard to turn a pig’s ear of a comedy into comic gold.

Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara are huge fun to watch and make a surprisingly great double-act in this modern-day female odd-couple comedy.

Witherspoon plays an uptight and by-the-book Officer Cooper, the laughing stock of her precinct, who tries to protect a sexy and loud Colombian former beauty queen Mrs Riva, widow of a drug boss, so she can turn state’s evidence.

But the pair are pursued across Texas by bent cops and Latino mobsters who want to kill them. 

Directed by Anne Fletcher (The Proposal, 27 Dresses), Hot Pursuit is totally devoid of any flair or imagination and relies on a plethora of pretty lame jokes.

Some are downright embarrassing, such as Vergara explaining the mechanics of menstruation to distract her pursuers, Witherspoon turning up disguised as a Justin Bieber lookalike and the pair pretending to be lesbians.

The running gag is that Cooper is “teeny tiny” according to Mrs Riva (Vergara) and is shrinking in size by the news bulletin while the merry widow is getting older. But it soon starts to wear thin.

Vergara, who has fine-tuned the role of gorgeous Hispanic trophy wife thanks to Modern Family, is a wonderful force of nature who uses every comic tool in her skillset to try and save this sinking ship. The downside is that she may be in danger of being typecast.

And it is a mystery why star and producer Witherspoon agreed to play such a thankless and hapless role.
The pair make a fabulous team but they simply deserve better material.

Review by Maria Duarte

The Cobbler (12A)
Directed by Tom McCarthy
3/5

THE CRITICAL consensus at the press show for this unexpectedly charming fable was almost uniformly unfavourable.
And that was before the film started.

Why? Became it stars Adam Sandler, which almost inevitably means a critical pasting since his films usually serve up overcooked comic corn and excruciating sugar-soaked schmaltz and are audience rather than reviewer oriented.

Here, however, director and co-writer Tom McCarthy extracts a likeable, surprisingly understated lead performance from Sandler who, thanks to the magical stitching machine inherited from his father, is literally able to step into other people’s shoes and take on their persona.

His subsequent adventures entertain, in a Walter Mittyesque manner.

He transforms into a Chinese man and a black gangster, gives neighbourhood bullies the comeuppance they deserve and, eventually, foils the crooked Elaine Greenawalt (Ellen Barkin) and her heavies who plan to make a fortune by forcing a tenant out of his home in order to gentrify yet another part of New York.

It’s no masterpiece but its blend of inherent charm and hopefulness, attractive New York locations and on-the-spot key performances by Sandler, Steve Buscemi as his mordant barber neighbour and Dustin Hoffman as his father make it Sandler’s most attractive and least irritating film since Punch Drunk Love.

Review by Alan Frank