Tarrador's "Netflix Movies 2009"

Perphaps the only theme more irritating than when some high-falutin’ Yankee has to come down to the backwards south, go without his cafe latte and cell phone service, and be compelled into skinning a buck and chewing tabacco before he can learn a serious lesson about the values of southern culture, is when a high-falutin’ career girl from swanky Miami comes to backwards Minnesota, confounded by snow, frustrated by simpletons and rubes, unable to walk the icy streets in her killer heels (that are wasted on these galoshes-wearing flannel shirt tree stumps called townsfolk), forced to fish through a hole in the ice and pee through a hole in her Carharts before she can learn a serious lesson about the values of good ole midwest culture.

All that is to say that New In Town was hopeless and souless and frantic without being touching or funny. Yet another example of how people from New York and Los Angeles view the squat bear-hunting Neanderthals of middle America. This movie perpetuates the stereotypical myth of the noble villager who is content to plow his two acres, sit by the fire with his pipe, and listen to Ma read stories to the kids, before putting out the kerosene lamp, giving thanks to God for all the good and bad, and shuffling off to bed. It trivialized the feelings of community in small towns at the same time it is holding them up as the one thing missing from the big cities. And it mocks the common sense abilities of people who have to know things just to get things done (“You mean you ain’t never run a combine tractor?), while marveling that they know suffistimicated stuff like using a fax machine. The movie was joyless, annoying, dumb, and Renee Zellweger looked like she was having an allergic reaction to some medication.