Hot Pursuit

"Hot Pursuit" isn't a hot mess, it's just a mess. This limp female-bonding action comedy hopes to follow in the footsteps of "The Heat," the 2013 mega-hit with odd couple Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in the leads; but the pairing of Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara is about as incendiary as a wet match. The concept has a straight-laced cop Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) partnered with Daniella Riva (Sofia Vergara), the wife of a drug lord that needs protection on a overnight trip from San Antonio to Dallas. Never has a road trip been this tedious. Is there a way of getting these 87-minutes back?

We learn during the credit sequence that Cooper was groomed into being a cop by her dad, a San Antonio police officer who let her sit in the backseat of his cruiser as he worked. There she came in contact with a variety of criminal types, including a drunk Santa and a beautiful drag queen with a deep voice. Oops, I may have revealed the film's single laugh.

That's not entirely fair, the cultural and personality divide between Witherspoon and Vergara is milked for all its worth; sometimes it's funny enough, but nothing pops. Much is made of Witherspoon's nerdy, boyish looks; but she's barely convincing, even when dressed like Justin Bieber; and if there was another joke about her height (it diminishes each time), Witherspoon would have become a Munchkin. As for Vergara, even when stressed she looks and acts as if she were 90-seconds away from a red carpet. Maybe she appears disengaged because she realized the unfathomable mess she was in; maybe it is just the pedestrian direction, by Anne Fletcher, for whom any ethnic or sexual stereotype is fair game. Did we really need a tacky lesbian scene? Or Vergara parading around with a tiara on her head for winning a Miss Plantain beauty contest? And did we need a gag involving a Cadillac filled with cocaine that explodes all over Witherspoon covering her in white powder?

Even Witherspoon gets tiresome, which rarely happens in her films. Her character - a-by-the-books, no-nonsense type - should have given her something to work with: nerd opens up, gets cool. But the script (by sitcom writers David Feeney and John Quaintance) does her in, despite a lovely moment when she succumbs to the attentions of a hunky parolee (an underused Rob Kazinsky) whose truck the women have stolen. Quite of few vehicles get stolen or destroyed, along with the hijacking of a bus filled with seniors that appear to be having the time of their lives as real car chase occurs around them. They think, I guess, that the bullets and mayhem was part of the Texas tour they're on. At least someone was having fun.

What might have worked is Vergara tapping into her bad girl side, instead she behaves like one of the Real Housewives of San Antonio. She may be a talented comedienne, but this Charo-imitation does little to enhance her film career. The harsh photography (by the usually first-rate Oliver Stapleton) does little for either of the actresses.

There is even an unintended reference to our current urban crisis involving the police in which Cooper mistakenly tasers the son of a local politician, causing him to catch fire. For having done something so ill-advised, Cooper was demoted and her last name became a popular meme, as in being "Coopered." This assignment is her chance to rid herself of that bad rep and restore her father's good name. The problem is that the sequence, seen in flashback, brings an unreal jolt of reality that puts an uncomfortable pale over the film's early portion from which it never recovers.

Though it is hard to say that the film would be much better without it. It pretty much lurches from action sequence to action sequence with dumb abandon punctuated by scenes of the women lamely bonding. That there's so little chemistry between the actresses only adds to the overall shrill tone. In the end, I felt that I had been "Coopered," and not with a taser that induces laughter.