ROTTEN TOMATOES: Opening This Week

ROTTEN TOMATOES: Movies opening This Week

• Taken: 3000 theaters; 52% positive reviews.

  Liam Neeson stars as a retired CIA tough guy whose daughter is kidnapped. Here's a tip for you kidnapping youngsters: skip the children of trained assassins, circus sharpshooters, and members of Charles Bronson's family. Yeah, I know he's dead. You think that'll stop him if you kidnap his grandkids?
  

• New In Town: 1900 theaters; 0% positive reviews.

  Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick star in roles probably turned down by Kate Hudson amd McConaughey. And when you consider the roles Kate Hudson and McConaughey do accept, that must give you pause before seeing this one. I will quote Slant's review in its entirety, since it is so deliciously nasty:

  
  "No wonder President Obama closed Gitmo — for any future torturing, all he has to do is make terror suspects endure New in Town. Even the quote-whore blurb that accompanies the film's latest commercials ("It's Legally Blonde meets Sweet Home Alabama!") doesn't do this rom-com's wretchedness justice, so agonizingly inane is its story and so insulting (to its characters and to the audience's intelligence) is its humor. Yet more than its dim-witted socioeconomic-clash gibberish and a lead performance from Renée Zellweger that induces viewer daydreams about the sweet relief of being deaf, dumb, and blind, the most notable aspect of Jonas Elmer's tale is its admission that Hollywood really, really hates Minnesota.

  Like the odious stepchild of Fargo, New in Town gleefully offers up citizens of rural, snowbound New Ulm, Minnesota as a collection of funny-speaking, Jesus-loving, tapioca-making misfits deserving of nothing less than outright mockery. That one of the lead weirdoes has the gall to climactically criticize transplanted city girl Lucy Hill (Zellweger) for looking down on those very traits exemplifies the cluelessness of Ken Rance and C. Jay Cox's script. A lack of self-awareness, however, is no big surprise considering that the narrative — in which high-heeled Miami exec Lucy is sent to oversee a New Ulm manufacturing plant and (duh) learns that simple folk are okay and that her soulmate happens to be a local rube (Harry Connick Jr.) who loves beer and pickup trucks — offers up city-is-bad, country-is-good blather that was cliché before its leading lady was even born. Watching the charmless, strident Zellweger (shot by Elmer in unflatteringly lit close-ups) smirk, pout, and whine is about as entertaining as wrestling a grizzly bear, though presumably there's someone out there (anyone? Anyone?!?) that finds hilarious the idea of her struggling with a stuck hunting-outfit zipper that's preventing her from going pee-pee. To those anonymous few, enjoy. To the rest, remember: If you choose to swim in sewage, don't complain about coming out feeling like shit."
  

• The Uninvited: 2000 theaters; no reviews.

  No reviews yet, but a good candidate for single figures, given the fact that they have not even bothered to send screeners to critics predisposed to like this sort of thing. Yet another PG-13 remake of an Asian horror film. We need lots more of those. Keep 'em coming lads.