Devoid of laughter, ripe with female stereotypes and with no relationship between the characters, Hot Pursuit is a black hole of comedy. All of the life seems to be sucked out of it. Reese Witherspoon and Sophia Vergara, in a buddy movie, seems a natural. Unfortunately there’s not a hint of a connection between them.  The characters are extremely exaggerated (not in a good way) and the dialogue is some of the worst I’ve heard.

I’m blaming this almost entirely on a poor choice of directors. There are plenty of great buddy movie directors and any of them would have been a better choice than Anne Fletcher. The director of such great action films as 27 Dresses and The Proposal (tongue stuck firmly in cheek), does not belong at the helm. The film plays more like Mean Girls than The Odd Couple. I was definitely looking forward to a female version of the latter.

Wiitherspoon plays Cooper, an unlikeable female Barney Fife-like character (hard to imagine) and Vergara is Daniella Riva, a drug lord’s shrewish wife. Vergara’s husband is testifying against his boss and Cooper is charged with getting he and his wife to court. The plot was good and could have been fun, but the characters are so incredibly annoying Hot Pursuit falls flat.

This film just doesn’t work. The writing is stilted, at best. The direction doesn’t make any sense. Why would you not want the audience to root for the Cooper and Riva? Both seemed clueless and uninteresting and I could have cared less. Even the villains were bland and generic. I would miss this movie like avoiding a zombie locked in an outhouse. Why bother. It’s just not worth the trouble.

Rating: .5 out of five stars