movie review hot pursuit

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Hot pursuit, common sense media reviewers.

Stars' chemistry can't save uninspiring, cliché comedy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Don't judge a book by its cover. But still, wo

Officer Cooper may not seem like a force to be rec

Gunfights sometimes result in deaths, though viewe

Conversations about sex, though nothing shown on s

"Damn," "ass," "hell,&quo

Logos for Dodge and Apple.

Drinking by adults (beer, liquor, etc.); flashback

Parents need to know that Hot Pursuit is primarily an odd-couple buddy road-trip comedy, though it does have some violence, given the subject matter (a cop protects a woman who could be a witness against a drug lord). Gunfights results in deaths (non gory), and there are car chases/crashes and fights. Expect…

Positive Messages

Don't judge a book by its cover. But still, women are judged by their appearance, and having humor based in "lace thongs vs. granny panties" divisions isn't exactly empowering. Other jokes are based on additional tired cliches about women (a character can't get a date because she's so square, etc.).

Positive Role Models

Officer Cooper may not seem like a force to be reckoned with, but she rises to the occasion when given the opportunity. Daniella Riva appears to be a materialistic, superficial trophy wife, but poor assumptions often deceive. Some stereotyping related to the "saucy Latina" archetype.

Violence & Scariness

Gunfights sometimes result in deaths, though viewers don't see much gore. A woman punches another. A man beats up another guy with his bare hands. Cars topple and careen on major highways, causing accidents.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Conversations about sex, though nothing shown on screen. A woman kisses a man, and he alludes to wanting more. A woman kisses a woman to distract a man. Many close-up shots of cleavage. The back of a woman, who's undressing in public, is shown, with her bra visible. A woman walks in on a man getting out of the shower; no sensitive body parts are shown, but it's implied that he's fully naked. Jokes related to the main characters' sex appeal (or lack thereof).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Damn," "ass," "hell," "scumbag," "bitch," and "s--t."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Drinking by adults (beer, liquor, etc.); flashback shows a character drunk. A main character is in the widow of a drug kingpin and is in danger from the cartel. Drugs are shown in flashback, and in one scene, a main character accidentally gets high on cocaine, with little consequence (situation is played for humor).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Hot Pursuit is primarily an odd-couple buddy road-trip comedy, though it does have some violence, given the subject matter (a cop protects a woman who could be a witness against a drug lord). Gunfights results in deaths (non gory), and there are car chases/crashes and fights. Expect some sexual innuendo, as well as kissing, a bra-clad woman undressing, and a naked man getting out of the shower (no graphic nudity shown in either case). The two stars ( Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara ) exchange a kiss with the intent of distracting a man, and there are plenty of jokes about their relative body shapes and sex appeal, as well as some humor based in Latina stereotypes. Strong language includes "s--t" and "bitch," and there's some drinking by adults; a main character also accidentally gets high (played for humor). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (4)
• Kids say (14)

Based on 4 parent reviews

An OK movie, but short on the laughs.

Not for kids, what's the story.

A drug lord is up for trial, and Officer Cooper ( Reese Witherspoon ), who rarely sees any action outside the evidence room, is finally invited to join the big time when she's asked to guard mobster's wife Daniella Riva ( Sofia Vergara ), who's entering the witness protection program and testifying against the cartel. But soon he's gunned down, along with the U.S. marshal assigned to protect him, leaving Cooper as the sole cop guarding Riva's life. As it turns out, allies don't appear to be allies, and enemies aren't easily identified. Against their wishes, the two women will have to rely on each other to survive.

Is It Any Good?

Though Witherspoon and Vergara have enough charisma to power through any calamity -- and the kind of rapport that's crucial to a buddy comedy -- they simply can't save it from being boring. The script holds no originality or surprises; in fact, it's so uninspired that it's almost offensive: Do we really still need period jokes? And is a woman's inability to get a date still to be attributed to her square-ness? Props for trying, but ho-hum. Witherspoon and Vergara deserve better.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

This is a female-driven buddy comedy. Is there anything different about the dynamic between the two women compared to how men's "bromances" tend to be portrayed in other films?

Families can talk about whether Hot Pursuit plays into issues related to body image and stereotyping . Is it OK for the two main characters to point out each other's perceived flaws because they're both women? What if a man was doing it? What's the ultimate message to viewers?

What role does violence play in the story? Do the gunfights and car crashes have less impact because the movie is a comedy?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 8, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : August 11, 2015
• Cast : Sofia Vergara , Reese Witherspoon , Michael Mosley
• Director : Anne Fletcher
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Warner Bros.
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 87 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sexual content, violence, language and some drug material
• Last updated : June 2, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Film Review: ‘Hot Pursuit’

Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara can't save this lazy, unfunny action-comedy.

By Andrew Barker

Andrew Barker

Senior Features Writer

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Throughout the 87-minute runtime of the action-comedy “ Hot Pursuit ,” director Anne Fletcher returns again and again to two gags about her stars’ appearances. In one, Sofia Vergara endures cracks about her age, which one character estimates as 50; in another, Reese Witherspoon is needled about having a mustache. These bits come fast and furious in spite of the fact that Vergara looks a good decade younger than her 42 years, and Witherspoon’s complexion is as clean and hairless as a newborn x oloitzcuintle . While hardly the pic’s worst moments, these feel emblematic of its tendency to look for laughs in all the wrong places, even if it means asking viewers to ignore their own lying eyes in service of a joke. Occasionally so ill calibrated that one isn’t quite sure if its title is even intended as a double entendre, “Hot Pursuit” will have to rely on the drawing power and generally endearing chemistry of its two stars to avoid being outpaced at the box office.

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Essentially updating “Midnight Run” for the modern era, “Hot Pursuit” pairs an OCD cop known only as Cooper (Witherspoon) with a pneumatic, materialistic gangster’s moll named Daniella Riva (Vergara), whom the former must somehow safely escort to Dallas so the latter can testify against a drug lord (Joaquin Cosio). With Witherspoon on as a producer, and Vergara credited as an exec producer, the film represents an all-too-rare example of a studio comedy featuring women in charge on both sides of the camera. This alone ought to call for celebration, but it’s hard to cheer too loudly for a film that often misfires with near-Happy Madison levels of imprecision.

Popular on Variety

For example, the opening credits haven’t even finished before we’re asked to laugh at a hoary sight gag involving a transgender prostitute, as we watch the young Cooper grow up riding along in her dad’s cop car. As an adult, the high-strung Cooper is keen to follow in her father’s footsteps, though she’s been grounded to desk duty after an allegedly hilarious incident in which she impulsively tasered an unarmed teenager and caused his clothes to catch fire. Because if there’s anything more timely in 2015 than trans jokes, it’s police-brutality slapstick.

She’s soon given a chance to atone for her trigger-happiness by helping escort the former Miss Plantain Daniella and her husband to their testimony, though no sooner has she arrived at the Rivas’ sprawling manse than two gangs of gunmen take out her partner and Daniella’s spouse. Escaping with Daniella in a nearby muscle car, Cooper informs her that her husband has been murdered, and her garment-rending wails are played for comedy. (Oh, those hot-blooded Latins and their theatrical reactions to things like loved ones being slaughtered.) Add in a pair of corrupt cops who pin the crime on Cooper, and the chase is on.

A few mildly tone-deaf jokes are hardly enough to sink “Hot Pursuit.” What does, however, is its tendency to belabor the laziest, most obvious gags beyond the point of reason. In a representative early example, Cooper conspires to escape from a duo of assailants by claiming Daniella is “having some issues with lady business of the tampon nature”; this is followed by Daniella giving a lengthy biological description of the process of menstruation; this is subsequently followed by the two fortysomething men grimacing with the sort of shock and disgust rarely seen outside a fifth-grade health class. (This pre-middle-school sensibility extends to the use of phrases like “chestal area” and a Sapphic makeout scene that is remarkably both unfunny and untitillating.)

It’s a shame, because Witherspoon remains one of the more underrated comedic talents of her generation (Elle Woods and Tracy Flick would both be career highlights for most actresses), and she clearly has some fun playing up her character’s mile-a-minute Texan chatter and loping cowgirl gait. Vergara aims for many of the same heavily accented Colombo-Charo notes she hits on “Modern Family,” but without that series’ knowing wit, her character tips into cartoonishness. At times the two give off enough sparks to suggest what they could do in the driver’s seat of a sturdier vehicle, especially with their snappy interrogation of Witherspoon’s love interest (Robert Kazinsky), who literally falls off the back of a truck into the middle of the film. But the script from David Feeney and John Quaintance rarely gives them much to work with.

Fletcher, who directed the watchably mediocre likes of “The Proposal” and “Guilt Trip” with more distinction, handles the pic’s scattered action scenes reasonably well, but the pacing often lags in a weird dead zone between shaggy improv and snappy screwball, without nailing the freedom of the former or the fizz of the latter. Louisiana stands in for Texas well enough, and tech work is pro.

Reviewed at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, April 30, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 87 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. release of a New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures presentation of a Foxy/Pacific Standard production. Produced by Bruna Papandrea, Reese Witherspoon, Dana Fox. Executive producers, Jeff Waxman, Sofia Vergara, Luis Balaguer.
• Crew: Directed by Anne Fletcher. Screenplay, David Feeney, John Quaintance. Camera (color), Oliver Stapleton; editor, Priscilla Nedd Friendly; music, Christophe Beck; music supervisor, Buck Damon; production designer, Nelson Coates; costume designer, Catherine Marie Thomas; art director, Jaymes Hinkle; sound (Dolby Digital), Steven A. Aaron; re-recording mixers, Ron Bartlett, Dean Zupancic; visual effects supervisors, Allan Magled, Tim Carras, John P. Nugent; visual effects, Soho, Comen, Sandbox; second unit camera, Duane “DC” Manwiller; assistant director, Joe Camp; casting, Cathy Sandrich Gelfon, Amanda Mackey
• With: Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, Robert Kazinsky, Joaquin Cosio, Matthew Del Negro, Michael Mosley, John Carroll Lynch, Richard T. Jones, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Gaffigan, Benny Nieves, Michael Ray Escamilla, Manolo Gonzales-Vergara.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Hot Pursuit

An uptight and by-the-book cop (Reese Witherspoon) tries to protect the outgoing widow (Sofia Vergara) of a drug boss as they race through Texas pursued by crooked cops and murderous gunmen. An uptight and by-the-book cop (Reese Witherspoon) tries to protect the outgoing widow (Sofia Vergara) of a drug boss as they race through Texas pursued by crooked cops and murderous gunmen. An uptight and by-the-book cop (Reese Witherspoon) tries to protect the outgoing widow (Sofia Vergara) of a drug boss as they race through Texas pursued by crooked cops and murderous gunmen.

• Anne Fletcher
• David Feeney
• John Quaintance
• Reese Witherspoon
• Sofía Vergara
• Matthew Del Negro
• 174 User reviews
• 159 Critic reviews
• 31 Metascore
• 4 nominations

• Rose Cooper

• Daniella Riva

• Detective Hauser

• Detective Dixon

• Detective Jackson

• Vicente Cortez

• Captain Emmett

• Felipe Riva

• Teresa Cortez

• (as Manolo Gonzales-Vergara)

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Manolo Gonzalez Vergara : Sofía Vergara son Manolo Gonzalez Vergara appears as the disc jockey at Teresa's ( Evaluna Montaner ) quinceañera.
• Goofs The cuff shackling Daniella to Cooper during the bus chase is obviously so big that she could have freed herself from it at any time. After the chase has ended, Sofía Vergara accidentally pulls her hand halfway out of it (a second before Cooper says "Move! Move!"), then hurriedly slides it back on her wrist.

Daniella Riva : What is that white thing?

Cooper : Oh, that's my underwear.

Daniella Riva : That's no underwear. That's a diaper!

Cooper : I like a lot of coverage.

• Crazy credits The ending credits include a blooper reel.
• Connections Featured in The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Sofia Vergara/James Marsden/Fetty Wap (2015)
• Soundtracks American Girl Written by Tom Petty Performed by Elle King Produced by Alan Bezozi Used courtesy of RCA Records By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

User reviews 174

• shawneofthedead
• May 6, 2015
• How long is Hot Pursuit? Powered by Alexa
• May 8, 2015 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official Twitter
• Don't Mess with Texas
• New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
• New Line Cinema
• Pacific Standard
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $35,000,000 (estimated)
• $34,580,201
• $13,942,258
• May 10, 2015
• $51,680,201

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 27 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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'Hot Pursuit': EW review

What’s spanglish for déjà vu ? There’s hardly a single moment in Hot Pursuit that won’t remind you of scenes you’ve seen at the multiplex a thousand times before. (The movie’s original title was Don’t Mess With Texas , probably because Thelma & Louise Ride the Pineapple Express All the Way to Jump Street—and They’ve Got Lethal Weapons, Y’all! was just too long.)

Reese Witherspoon stars as Rose Cooper, a deskbound San Antonio cop with the mien of an anxious meerkat and the luck of a two-leaf clover. She can reel off every code in the precinct handbook, but her name has become a synonym for screwing up ever since she accidentally Tasered the local mayor’s son (as in “Aw, man, you just got Coopered!”). Sofia Vergara steers into the casting curve as Daniella Riva, a feisty Colombian glamazon with an arsenal of tight dresses and a loose grasp on American idioms. The pair meet cute-ish when Cooper—for most of the movie, her first name’s just “Officer”—and another detective are assigned to escort Daniella and her drug-dealing husband to a Dallas courtroom, where they’re scheduled to testify against notorious (is there any other kind?) cartel leader Vicente Cortez.

But Cortez’s hitmen, of course, have other plans: Five minutes and 50 bullets later, Cooper’s got a partner down, Daniella is freshly widowed, and these two ladies are on the lam in a “borrowed” Cadillac convertible with some questionable cargo in the trunk. (In keeping with the rules of comedy, Daniella seems to finish grieving in about the time it took you to read this sentence.) Under more sensible circumstances, they would head straight to the nearest police station. But it turns out that the pair’s would-be assassins just might be dirty cops—and they’re determined to finish the job they started, so the girls have to beat them to Dallas, pronto.

And so a long, wobbly string of shenanigans begins. Some bits are genuinely funny—Cooper accidentally getting jacked on the “baking powder” in the trunk, a furious whisper-fight in subtitled Spanish, something deeply weird about a squirrel—but most, painfully, are not. Director Anne Fletcher ( The Proposal ) doesn’t seem to know how to play it any way but broad: Witherspoon’s character is so tightly wound she’s practically corkscrewed, while Vergara’s Daniella is left to lean hard on every Latina- caliente cliché. (Los boobs: She has them!) The script barely bothers to acknowledge huge holes in logic, and even the low-key charm of Cooper’s potential love interest ( True Blood ’s Robert Kazinsky) is drowned out by the constant, frenzied clang of slapstick; maybe the Taser got him, too.

The best part of Hot Pursuit by far comes at the end, in the blooper reel. That’s where we finally get to see two smart, engaging actresses with real chemistry do naturally what they’ve been straining so hard to do for the past 90 minutes: Make us laugh. C

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‘hot pursuit’: film review.

Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara are chased through Texas in Anne Fletcher's slapstick female buddy comedy.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Isn’t this the sort of nitwit comedy Reese Witherspoon wasn’t going to have to make anymore after becoming a producer on the likes of Wild and Gone Girl ? A jaw-droppingly klutzy law enforcement farce in the vein of The Heat , albeit deprived of the R-rated raunch and out-there gags, this is a down-home comedy that should have stayed there, as it does no favors to the appealing but ill-served (and poorly photographed) co-stars Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara . This Warner Bros. release will probably hit the target audience of the mainstream girls’-night-out crowd but that’s it.

As if she didn’t get enough of a road trip on her dim previous outing, The Guilt Trip , director Anne Fletcher takes to the highway again here as straight-arrow cop Cooper (Witherspoon) tries to protect a newly widowed drug dealer’s wife, Daniella ( Vergara ), from all sorts of bad guys on both sides of the law as they careen through Texas in a variety of commandeered vehicles.

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A nifty opening montage shows Cooper literally growing up in the back seat of her father’s cop car, as she’s exposed to assorted predicaments throughout her youth. Then there’s an amusing joke about her bad experience courtesy of a “Christian mingle” dating service. But it’s all downhill from there, as Cooper’s exaggerated obsession with rules and regulations makes her seem like a far less engaging variation on Witherspoon’s primly determined characters in Election and the Legally Blonde  films.

During a shootout at the drug lord’s house, the pinched and bossy Cooper must drag the haughtily glamorous Daniella from the scene, which she won’t leave without a suitcase full of fancy shoes. Imperiled by nearly everyone who rolls down the roads as reports describing Cooper as a rogue cop blare from TV screens, Cooper eventually finds a way to exchange her police uniform for a cute red dress, while Daniella discards her form-fitting white number for a black top and tight pants.

But even rudimentary scenes of the women changing or trying to climb haphazardly out of a high bathroom window to escape their pursuers come off just as poorly executed slapstick. Running gags have a little fun with varying insulting newscaster estimates as to Cooper’s ever-diminishing height and Daniella’s ever-increasing age, but the film is essentially nothing but little and ineffectual bits of recycled shtick with no sense of freshness of invention. And the women never bond in even the most rote or superficial way that’s expected in this sort of claptrap.

At no moment in the dire script by TV writers David Feeney ( Ben and Kate , New Girl ) and John Quaintance ( Ben and Kate , Undateable ) does anything seem truly at stake. When Cooper’s partner is shot in a firefight , for example, she just takes off without even determining whether he’s dead or alive. Nor are any of the secondary characters, including a potential love interest for the virginal Cooper, written or cast with an eye for quirkiness, individuality or arresting manner of speech. Watching a few Preston Sturges or Coen brothers films might have at least inspired the writers to push their efforts a little further when it comes to the linguistic possibilities of rural and small-town characters.

Everyone just seems to go through the motions here, with no destination in mind. Witherspoon’s last so-called comedy, This Means War , was so bad that she stayed away from the genre for a few years; this outing may well occasion another hiatus. Vergara can’t help but look spectacular but isn’t done any great favors by the bright lighting and never has a moment to really register her full sexiness.

The once-common practice of showing out-take blunders alongside the end credits is resurrected here. But they aren’t funny either.

Production: New Line Cinema, MGM, Foxy/Pacific Standard

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara , John Carroll Lynch, Robert  Kazinsky , Richard T. Jones, Michael Mosley, Matthew Del Negro, Benny  Nieves , Michael Ray Escamilla , Vincent Laresca , Joaquin Cosio , Jim  Gaffigan , Mike Birbiglia

Director: Anne Fletcher

Screenwriters: David Feeney , John Quaintance

Producers: Bruna Papandrea , Reese Witherspoon, Dana Fox

Executive produces: Jeff Waxman , Sofia Vergara , Luis Balaguer

Director of photography: Oliver Stapleton

Production designer: Nelson Coates

Costume designer: Catherine Marie Thomas

Editor: Priscilla Nedd Friendly

Music: Buck Damon

Casting: Cathy Sandrich Gelfon , Amanda Mackey

PG-13 rating, 88 minutes

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'Hot Pursuit' Movie Review: Witherspoon, Vergara Team for Comedy

Should you see Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspoon's new film?

— -- Starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara

Rated PG-13

Two out of five stars

As a child, Reese Witherspoon’s Cooper grew up in the back seat of her father’s police car. At least, that’s how it’s presented in "Hot Pursuit." In a montage, we watch her go from a little girl, sitting in the back alongside the likes of a drunk Santa and a transvestite, to a senior in high school, where her father gives her a ride to the prom.

Next thing you know, Cooper’s an adult, chasing a man on foot through city traffic. Turns out it’s her blind date from Christian Mingle, who decided to bolt when she put her gun on the table during their date. Cooper is uptight, extremely by-the-book, and kind of rigid. Make that completely rigid.

Back at the precinct, Cooper’s in charge of the evidence room, but her captain has a more important job for her. She’s to accompany a federal marshal to the home of a married couple and escort them to Dallas, where they’re scheduled to testify against a notorious drug lord.

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The wife, Mrs. Riva (" Modern Family "’s Sofía Vergara), is a wealthy woman who’s enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, thanks to her husband, who was the accountant and chief money smuggler for the drug lord. When Cooper and the marshal arrive at the house, two separate teams of assassins attack, killing the husband and the federal marshal.

But Cooper and Mrs. Riva escape, whereupon all sorts of madcap zaniness ensues! Not really, but writers David Feeney and John Quaintance sure tried to make it seem that way.

Witherspoon and Vergara both possess terrific comedic timing, so there are some funny moments in "Hot Pursuit." There are also lots of moments that aren’t as funny as they should have been because the dialogue is so profoundly stupid, too stupid even to be funny. Feeney and Quaintance do an OK job of utilizing Vergara’s thick Latina accent for comedic fodder, but that soon gets old. Director Anne Fletcher also should have had a better handle on Vergara who, at various points, seems to be mugging for the camera.

You’ll laugh a few times, but "Hot Pursuit" fails to be the smart comedy it should’ve been, especially given that it stars an Oscar-winning actress and the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated star of one of TV’s top comedies. This movie feels beneath them.

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Hot Pursuit Review

Probable flaws.

This isn't saying much, but the best parts of Hot Pursuit are in the trailer. Basically, all the jokes boil down to Witherspoon being short and Vergara being... well, Colombian . It's a sad state of affairs when these two talents are literally reduced to the sum of their parts. Worse yet, their characters have zero chemistry, and unlike most buddy comedies, their inevitable friendship doesn't feel earned. That's because they spend the entire movie bickering amongst themselves.

Despite a merciful 87-minute runtime, Hot Pursuit is gratingly vapid and wholly unoriginal. Not even stars Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara can save this arid wasteland of a buddy comedy. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter or MaxNicholson on IGN.

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Hot Pursuit

I had high hopes for Hot Pursuit . Chalk it up to the fact that it’s a comedy made by a woman (director Anne Fletcher), starring women ( Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara ), and seemingly for women. The best case scenario I was hoping for was a new The Heat situation, but the worst came true. Writers David Feeney and John Quaintance played into just about every sort of cliche you could possibly think of with little to no surprises.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Cooper (Witherspoon), a by-the-book cop, follows in the footsteps of her father, one of the best cops there ever was who died in the line of duty. Thanks to a situation, exacerbated by her lack of experience, she has disgraced her family name and has been assigned to manning the evidence desk ever since, until she finally gets the chance she deserves.

It comes in the form of Felipe Riva, a drug boss, and his spitfire wife, Daniella (Vergara). The two are going to testify in court against the ultimate drug kingpin, but that means they need to go into protective custody. When Cooper, accompanied by a more experienced cop, comes to see them off to the courthouse in Dallas, their home comes under fire by two sets of assailants. Both Mr. Riva and her partner are killed in the crossfire, so Cooper goes on the run with Mrs. Riva to keep her safe. It doesn’t help matters much that everyone thinks Cooper is a dirty cop and the news is plastering their faces on all of the major TV networks.

The beginning of the movie, which just focuses on setting up Witherspoon’s character, Officer Cooper, is as dull and obvious as this premise sounds. Her only redeeming quality as a character in a comedy is the fact that she talks in a rapid-fire Southern accent, which, I guess, some people can find charming and comical. But if it wasn’t for Vergara’s signature over-the-top personality to provide some semblance of, you know, actual comedy, the movie would be even worse than it is. It’s not even offensive, and it easily could be. There’s a scene where Riva and Cooper pretend to be lesbians in order to get out of a tight situation. Then there’s the whole aspect of dirty cops while our nation is still processing the situation surrounding Baltimore. This should be bad timing. Hot Pursuit isn’t memorable enough to actually cause any sort of reaction, though.

I can’t speak for the filmmakers, but the problem seems to be that they relied too heavily on Witherspoon and Vergara for comedy. The script isn’t there. The dialogue is shoddy. The story has a lot of ridiculous loopholes and circumstances in order to explain events or get the characters from point A to point B. A perfect example comes when the duo's car breaks down because it just so happens to be the one car in Riva’s arsenal of vintage vehicles that is always overheating. On top of that, a truck rams into it and sprays the cocaine conveniently hidden in the trunk all over Riva and Cooper, sending Cooper into a drug-fueled high. A scene like this, which is barely held together with plausibility, should have been funny. Unfortunately, like the rest of the movie as a whole, it felt like Fletcher pointed the camera and said, “Okay, Witherspoon, go heavy with the Southern Belle charm and speak your lines really fast. And, Vergara, just be Vergara.”

Both women are charming enough to hawk a film like this on talk shows and in interviews, but even they couldn’t save this film. The best material was already replayed to death in the trailers and TV spots, and the film has nothing else to offer.

I still enjoy Vergara’s schtick when utilized properly, but she needs to find a new gig. There was a moment in Hot Pursuit that I won’t spoil, but that made me think perhaps she could pull off something a bit more serious, something a bit more Law & Order villain, and worthy of a decent script. A spitfire Latina bombshell is the only tool she has pulled from her box so far, and she’s been riding that one for all the money it’s worth. But as shown with Hot Pursuit , it doesn’t guarantee laughs. Her performance in this film makes you think something funny is going on because she’s loud, rolls her tongue, and speaks so fast that there’s a delay in your comprehension. But after the first couple of giggles, you come to the depressing realization that you’ve wasted nearly 90 minutes of your life that you’ll never get back.

That’s what I felt — depressed. It’s a sad day when you walk out of the theater and think that the bloopers shown beside the final credits are funnier than the actual movie.

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Hot Pursuit Reviews

• 31   Metascore
• 1 hr 27 mins
• Drama, Comedy, Action & Adventure
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A bumbling female police officer is assigned to protect a drug dealer's widow from corrupt cops and criminals who want her dead. After realising they've been set up, they go on the run and try to pass themselves off as a couple.

Judging by the outtakes shown during the closing credits of Hot Pursuit, it appears that co-stars Reese Witherspoon and Sofía Vergara had a grand ole time pretending to fight each other during filming. Unfortunately for the viewer, that rather humdrum blooper reel is the highlight of director Anne Fletcher’s irksome and exasperatingly silly movie. Witherspoon plays Officer Cooper, an earnest, second-generation Texas cop who gets demoted to evidence-room clerk after a disastrous tasing incident involving the mayor’s son turns her name into shorthand for screwing up royally (as in, “Be careful not to Cooper the situation”). Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the chief of police assigns her the important task of protecting a drug dealer’s wife as she’s transported to Dallas to testify against a local kingpin. But shortly after arriving at the dealer’s mansion and meeting his gorgeous but querulous wife Daniella Riva (Vergara), all hell breaks loose as two unrelated sets of assassins show up with guns blazing, killing both Cooper’s partner and said drug dealer. As she frantically bumbles about the mansion, Cooper breaks her radio and acts as if she’s never held a gun before. She eventually locates Daniella hiding in the back of a classic Cadillac, and the pair take off on a ridiculous jaunt through Texas; the audience will probably wish they were crossing Rhode Island instead, so the movie would reach its conclusion faster. The ups and downs of Oscar winner Witherspoon’s career are starting to resemble a stock-market line chart, with bullish critical hits like Mud (2012), Wild (2014), and The Good Lie (2014) plotted alongside bearish flops such as Devil’s Knot (2013), and This Means War (2012); now comes Hot Pursuit, which in NASDAQ terms is her Black Monday. As with any great actress, Witherspoon gives herself completely over to her roles, transforming into the characters and adopting their quirky traits as her own so that they seem perfectly natural instead of an affectation. The problem here is that Officer Cooper is downright annoying: Her hyperactive pacing, unsmiling face, and a rat-tat-tat garrulousness make you want to cheer on Daniella whenever she complains about her protector’s unrelenting motormouth. Vergara, physically dazzling as she may be, plays her role in the exact same key as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett from Modern Family, complete with the exaggerated Colombian accent, ample cleavage, and expensive stilettos. It would have been a refreshing change to see some real emotion from Vergara instead of her usual histrionics and arm flailing, as evidenced in the scene in which she finds out that her husband is dead. In place of an authentic reaction of disbelief and horror befitting the tragic situation, we get a wide-mouthed bellow that quickly dissipates into whining about wanting to escape from the car and get away from the annoying cop who’s trying to protect her (although it’s tough to blame her for that last part). Both actresses fail to convince the audience that they are doing anything other than checking “slapstick comedy” off their movie-role bucket lists. Sitting through this film is like bearing witness to two hyperactive preteens fighting nonstop on a long car ride, until a fed–up parent pulls over to mete out some punishment. Only there are no parents to end the craziness in Hot Pursuit, meaning the audience must endure the caterwauling and bickering straight through to the end credits.

HOT PURSUIT

"comical escapades".

What You Need To Know:

(CC, BB, PP, PaPa, HoHo, LLL, S, N, A, DD, MM) Overt Christian, moral worldview with references to God, the Cross and prayer about good cops bringing justice to a murderous drug cartel leader and the bad cops in his employ, marred by immoral pagan jokes and foul language, plus some comical lesbian references; 22 obscenities (mostly light “h” and a** words), three GDs by villains, and 14 light profanities (two heard over end credits); light comic violence but nothing extremely bloody or gory includes shooting, people shot to death, man accidentally shoots off finger (but no disturbing close-ups), truck runs into car and three people are covered with some cocaine hidden in car, pratfalls, a couple people knocked out; no depicted sex but some light crude sexual references (including a couple male organ jokes) and unfamiliar slang terms used for comedy plus woman comically tries to convince a man that she and another woman are lesbian lovers, and she tries to kiss and hug other woman, who’s uncomfortable and tries to avoid the ruse; upper male nudity when woman accidentally sees man after he’s come out of a shower; alcohol use but mostly implied; no smoking but plot is about bringing down a drug cartel and in one scene a truck accidently hits car with cocaine powder hidden in it, and policewoman acts very manic when that powder spills on her as a result, so the scene may make cocaine use look like innocuous fun; and, police corruption, lying, people bend rules, and revenge subplot but revenge is rebuked in favor of justice.

More Detail:

HOT PURSUIT is a broad comedy about two women, a policewoman and a drug informant’s wife, who have to run from killers determined to stop the wife from testifying against the drug cartel leader in court. HOT PURSUIT has an overt Christian, moral worldview, along with some truly funny moments, but it’s marred by some off-color humor, lesbian jokes and foul language, plus too much predictability and comedy that doesn’t work as well.

The movie follows a policewoman named Rose Cooper (Reese Witherspoon), whose father was the best cop in San Antonio. She wants to carry on his legacy but is bumbling and gets no respect. She finally gets a chance at a big case when her chief assigns her to be the protector of Daniella Riva (Sofía Vergara), the wife of a drug informant whose husband is set to testify against the head of their cartel.

However, when Rose and the federal agent assigned to oversee her go to pick up Daniella and her husband, two teams of men enter and kill the husband and the federal agent. Thus, Rose and Daniella run in a desperate attempt to stay alive and make it to the testimony. Complicating matters is that two of the men who killed Daniella’s husband were crooked cops working for the cartel leader.

Numerous car chases, foot chases and other comic mayhem ensue, with the two women bonding along the way. The plot is clichéd in many places but has occasionally surprising twists that produce big laughs. Also, Director Anne Fletcher and her ace duo of leads, Witherspoon and Vergara, maintain a high energy that keeps HOT PURSUIT a fairly engaging romp.

Audiences will likely find HOT PURSUIT enjoyable enough, even though several scenes cross into stupidity and aren’t quite believable. There’s also a scene where lesbian kissing is shown in a comically positive light. HOT PURSUIT also has plenty of PG-13 foul language and some other off-color comedy. The strongest surprise from a Christian perspective is that Rose and Daniella are both shown as believers. They speak about prayer, God, and the angels in matter of fact, positive, natural ways, but within the movie’s broad comical context, of course.

Altogether, HOT PURSUIT isn’t high art, but it has enough basic, and sometimes positive, fun to provide an evening’s entertainment, but strong and extreme caution is advised.

Hot Pursuit (2015)

Directed by anne fletcher.

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Description by Wikipedia

Hot Pursuit is a 2015 American comedy film directed by Anne Fletcher and written by David Feeney and John Quaintance. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofía Vergara, the film was released on May 8, 2015, by Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

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Hot Pursuit is a painfully unfunny, hack attempt at comedy that is easily one of the worst films I have seen this year. Its biggest grievance is the racially offensive performance delivered by Sofía Vergara . Her one trick pony of playing the spicy Latina falls flatter than the mild sauce at Taco Bell. Couple this with the film's nonsensical plot, the lack of chemistry with lead Reese Witherspoon , and you have a stinker that has no redeeming values.

Reese Witherspoon stars as Cooper, a diminutive, by-the-book San Antonio cop stuck in the basement precinct checking in evidence. She's pulled out of the doldrums to accompany a DEA agent (Richard T. Jones) on a pickup of a drug cartel informer. Per regulation, a female officer must be present because the informant's wife, Mrs. Riva ( Sofía Vergara ), is accompanying him into witness protection. The pick-up predictably goes awry. Cooper and Riva abscond into the wiles of Texas with crooked cops and cartel hit men in tow.

The primary story arc of them getting from San Antonio to Dallas is ludicrous. Their travails in procuring a cell phone to contact non-corrupt authorities is beyond silly. Then you have bad guys who just happen to pop-up everywhere, at the worst time, with no explanation whatsoever. The direction and editing is so sloppy, it's as if they didn't really care if the film looked good or was conceptually sound. It's hard to imagine that Reese Witherspoon is an Oscar winning actress from watching Hot Pursuit . But her goofy turn as Cooper pales in comparison to the accented shucking and jiving Sofía Vergara does on screen. I'm sure Latina actresses just shudder when they see roles like this.

It's plausible to see why the concept for this film was appealing. Sexy ethnic gal teams up with uptight white gal in a lighthearted action romp. You have the female bonding/empowerment, the fish out of water, and just enough violence to keep the boyfriends/husbands entertained. Seems like a winning formula that has proven successful in the past. But everything depends on skillful execution and Hot Pursuit lacks that in every possible way. I wouldn't even recommend looking at a poster for this nonsense.

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Review: Left cold by ‘Hot Pursuit’

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How bad is it?

“Hot Pursuit,” the new female buddy comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara, is so bad even a wild bunch of die-hard misogynists would be offended.

It’s so bad it will go down as Academy Award-winning Witherspoon’s worst movie, at least for the foreseeable future.

It’s so bad it will keep “Modern Family” star Vergara locked up tight in her sexy over-the-top Colombian comedian cliché box.

Seemingly destined to become a late-night punch line, the movie, which plays the “sexy” and “sexless” female stereotypes at full blast, is so bad you’d think it was directed by the worst sort of male chauvinist director.

Not so. Anne Fletcher, the filmmaker behind the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds rom-com romp “The Proposal,” directed “Hot Pursuit.” What’s more, Witherspoon is one of the producers, and Vergara is an executive producer. This is an equal-opportunity fiasco.

The film opens with a montage of a little blond girl growing up in the back seat of her daddy’s police car. Apparently riding along as his good cop was deemed an appropriate substitute for daycare.

The girl grows up to be Officer Cooper (Witherspoon), a dowdy, flat-chested, rule-quoting, evidence room flunky. On the beat, Cooper is best known for mistakenly setting an innocent man on fire with her Taser when she overhears him calling out “shotgun” as he and his friends head to their car. (Given last month’s accidental killing by a reserve officer who mistook his gun for a Taser, this loses even the minimal humor the joke started with.)

On the dating front for Cooper, things are even worse.

Cooper’s ticket out of the dead-end evidence room is Daniella Riva (Vergara). Riva and her husband are due in Dallas for a grand jury session that will put major drug dealer Vicente Cortez (Joaquin Cosio) behind bars and send the Rivas into witness protection. The law requires Riva be accompanied by a female cop, and Cooper makes Capt. Emmett’s (John Carroll Lynch) short list.

The cop and her charge are, of course, oil and water: Riva is flamboyant, flaunting her cleavage and determined to bring along all of her expensive shoes. Cooper is insistent, constantly citing penal code sections for why things must be done just so.

Sound familiar? Writers David Feeney (“New Girl”) and John Quaintance (“Ben & Kate”) seem to borrow the formula but none of the fun from the Robert De Niro-Charles Grodin riot “Midnight Run,” that clock-ticking classic about a cop and perp on the run cross-country.

In “Hot Pursuit,” a complicated shoot-out leaves Riva’s husband, Felipe (Vincent Laresca), in a pool of blood and the widow’s anonymity compromised. There are dirty cops and drug dealers to run from.

And so they do.

This is where the humor and the humanity — opposite types bonding as they discover common ground — should shift into high gear. But only the silliness of the slapstick stunts ramp up. The laughs that are supposed to keep audiences engaged never work because the central characters are hamstrung by rote dialogue and run-of-the-mill situations that are supposed to be funny.

Consider the overused “give the dowdy girl a makeover” segment, which exposes Cooper’s oversized white panties but little humor. There is the equally familiar “get out of a tight squeeze by going out a tiny bathroom window” scene. And, naturally, when the two steal a truck, they find out its hunky owner is asleep in the back.

This is the moment in the film when the romance should kick in. Randy (Robert Kazinsky), the guy in the truck bed, is cute, but he’s also a felon with an ankle monitor, which theoretically eliminates him in Cooper’s dating manual. But he’s persistent, so, you know, an awkward flirtation begins.

Ironically, the central conflict that drives all the slapstick action in “Hot Pursuit” has more of a story arc than any of the characters. It involves the complex reasons someone pulled into the drug underworld might turn despite the danger.

For Witherspoon and Vergara, there are no real arcs. Instead, they must work through scenes that represent one humiliation after another. The winner in that category involves a deer head, a roadblock and the requirement that its stars make grunting “deer” sounds.

There are no words left to describe it.

Twitter: @betsysharkey

------------

‘Hot Pursuit’

MPAA rating: PG-13, for sexual content, violence, language and some drug material

Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes

Playing: In general release

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Former Los Angeles Times film critic Betsy Sharkey is an award-winning entertainment journalist and bestselling author. She left the newsroom in 2015. In addition to her critical essays and reviews of about 200 films a year for The Times, Sharkey’s weekly movie reviews appeared in newspapers nationally and internationally. Her books include collaborations with Oscar-winning actresses Faye Dunaway on “Looking for Gatsby” and Marlee Matlin on “I’ll Scream Later.” Sharkey holds a degree in journalism and a master’s in communications theory from Texas Christian University.

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