Hot Pursuit – Just Bad Boob Jokes?

In a word? Forgettable.

The story wasn’t really bad, and hit all the points we needed it to, but come back to me in 6 months and ask me what I thought about this script and it’ll take me a few moments to remember what it was even about.

However, there were a few good twists on twists that caught me off guard.

The Good

Page 4 – Cooper comes busting out after a “Nervous Guy” and we assume she’s chasing a criminal. In actuality, she’s hot on the heels of a guy just wanting out of an awkward first date. Funny opening and decent setup for her character.

Page 51 – Red spots Cooper on the news, makes a call, and suddenly they’re headed for the nearest police roadblock. Turns out Red’s a government hating meth manufacturer, and is all too happy to hide Cooper and Daniella in some musty old truck seat getting them past the cops.

Page 74 – Cooper’s flashbacks to her “founding police fathers” were interesting. Especially how her language mirrors that of her father.

Page 82 – And I might be the only one who didn’t see this one, but I wasn’t expecting Daniella to be behind everything with the ultimate goal being Houston’s Drug Baroness. Backstab Reese Witherspoon, sure, but her whole plot to take over the world was thrown in kind of late and underdeveloped.

The Bad…

The few twists above didn’t do much to offset the predictability of the rest of the story.

Page 16 – NEITHER pair of gunmen thought to search the house for Cooper and Daniella? Even if Angel and Jesus were on Daniella’s side, the dirty cops still knew Cooper was in the house, and probably Daniella too. Seems silly they’d leave witnesses.

Page 30 – Of course one pair of gunmen were dirty cops. Did anyone NOT see this coming? My one positive point here is that the writers make that info known early, and don’t drag it out until the end when we all know where the story’s going.

Page 52 – Red’s homestead had some WEIRD shit going on there, but Cooper and Daniella get let off the hook too easy. Randy makes the comment that there are these crazy sex orgies, but no one’s making a pass at lusty Daniella? They only kissed their sisters?

Page 80 – Daniella gets Cooper’s gun and back stabs her. We all knew they couldn’t be buddies forever.

Page 92 – Dirty cops firing on an ENTIRE BUS full of witnesses? What they didn’t do earlier on, they now have no problem with. It’s stupid, and the writers should have found a more clever way to get the cops to stop the tour bus.

Page 94 – How did Jesus and Angel know Daniella was on the bus? She made a call from the hotel to them, but their being in the middle of the highway, even having time to lay down tire spikes, is too convenient.

And the Quinceanera.

Daniella gets away, and because this is a stereotypical story, our hero has to catch the bad guy right?

Um, okay, but by this part of the script I was ready to be done.

We’re introduced to a room full of new characters, most of which we could give a shit less about, and then there’s Angel’s sister.

Throughout the script there’s hints dropped that Angel has a problem with the sexy preteen his sister is becoming. So of course we’re treated to her in some slutty outfit which sends him over the top.

But again, we don’t really give a shit about Angel and boys hitting on his little hermana. It’s not the main story, or even the B story, why should we care?

The entire thing felt like a “look how knowledgeable we are about Mexican culture” back pat exchange between the writers.

Hopefully this portion was reworked, into something other than Cooper going in solo, and potentially fucking up multiple agency investigations.

And the ending…

If you want a GREAT example of a “prison goodbye” watch the very last scene of Justified. Hell, if that doesn’t work, and you want an actual example from the comedy genre, watch the final scene in Identity Thief.

The joke here being she’s a giant bitch. And it isn’t like she grows as a character, she remains a bitch throughout the film.

Which is a major problem, because at no point in this film do we ever get the feeling these two are becoming friends. Like none.

Two group of bad guys show up, one side being the dirty cops and the other being guys who work for mush mouth. Seriously, I had no idea what she was saying like 90% of the time. Thankfully, she’s subtitled at times when she speaks Spanish. Other than that it’s just her jiggling around screeching like she’s possessed by the spirit of Fran Drescher.

Fran Drescher is dead, right?

I don’t know what Witherspoon is going for with her accent either. She mostly sounds like Holly Hunter. Kind of plays it like her too.

Anyway!