Alex Reviews Hot Pursuit – Reese Witherspoon’s Action Comedy Is Unfunny And Anti-Feminist

Reese Witherspoon manages to undo all the career steps and feminist flag-waving she made with her Oscar-nominated turn in Wild in this criminally unfunny action comedy. Directed and produced exclusively by women, it inexplicably has no understanding of how women actually think, with a cycle of gross-out period gags and lengthy lesbian-mocking sequences that turn its slight 87 minute runtime into a gruelling endurance test. Paul Feig’s incessant “Women are funny, seriously” schtick looks restrained next to this.

Witherspoon is Cooper, a cop who is bad at her job because the script says she is, goddammit. She’s passionate, knowledgable and serious, yet also oblivious, impersonable and incompetent. Just pick a flaw and go with it. Worse than that layered confusion though is what she goes through to sort everything out. Ostensibly Cooper must learn to be less by the book to succeed, but the real key to her eventual transformation is embracing her feminine side in the most horribly presented way possible; if she’s going to be happy in life, all she needs is to dress like a woman and find a toy boy. Sickening.

Sofía Vergara as the character Cooper is tasked with escorting through Texas (I can’t remember what she’s called and refuse to IMDb it) is just as bad, spewing a never ending tirade of Latino stereotypes that make Ant-Man’s Luis look like an affectionate portrayal. Both characters are immensely unlikeable, performed with variations of heavily accented screeching and screaming, vying with Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele for the worst on-screen pair of 2015.