If you were tasked to create the most offensively bland, frustratingly uninspired, and altogether banal spin on the odd couple action comedy that had ever existed, there’s a distinct chance it would look an awful lot like 2015’s Hot Pursuit.
Despite boasting Academy Award winner and A-list superstar Reese Witherspoon in one of the lead roles – furthering her impressive ascent to Hollywood’s richest self-made actress despite a distinct lack of good movies – an eight percent Rotten Tomatoes was exactly what director Anne Fletcher’s woeful road trip adventure deserved.
In fact, it ranks as the single worst-reviewed feature that Witherspoon has ever appeared in, although it’s at least a small mercy to discover that co-star Sofia Vergara has lent her name to a smattering of worse projects, which was to be expected when the Modern Family alum was part of the egregious affront to cinema that was The Emoji Movie.
The former’s straight-arrow cop takes the latter’s testifying witness from San Antonio to Dallas so she can spill the beans on a notorious drug lord, only for the pair to end up running for their lives now that bent cops and hired killers are on their tail, and it’s every bit as predictable as it sounds.
Nevertheless, despite being one of the perennially-popular subgenre’s worst-ever examples, Hot Pursuit continues to draw in a crowd after embarking on its latest streaming comeback. Per FlixPatrol, the universally-panned misfire is one of the top-viewed titles on ad-supported platform Freevee, which begs the question as to why users would want to extend the experience of suffering through the film when its mercifully brief 87 minute running time is being padded out with constant ad breaks.