Let me get this out of the way: Both “Get Hard” and “Mortdecai” now have some serious competition for the most painfully unfunny film of the year in the form of “Hot Pursuit.”

As the late Roger Ebert once said, it is an entertainment-free dead zone.

Reese Witherspoon stars as Cooper, an uptight, by-the-books officer from Texas who’s been assigned to protect a drug dealer and his wife (Sofia Vergara of “Modern Family”) from a drug lord. Right from the get-go, Witherspoon and Vergara’s characters do nothing except become obnoxious, have zero chemistry and are stereotypically awful.

The movie plays like a setup for a bad episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Our two leading ladies find themselves in a series of ridiculous predicaments such as being in a bar with rowdy bikers, escaping crooked cops and hamming up the screen with annoying accents.
Even at only 87 minutes long, the movie sure felt interminable.

“Hot Pursuit” is silly and ludicrous, but we expected that. What surprised me is how dead in the water the script is at every twist and turn. By the end, I felt exhausted and couldn’t wait for this bore-fest to be over.

Witherspoon has done some great work in her career, (“Pleasantville” and “Walk the Line” come to mind), but she has probably hit the bottom of the barrel. The story surpasses stupidity and becomes just plain inconsequential, the acting is horrendous and overbearing, and the dialogue and humor are atrocious from start to finish.

“Hot Pursuit?” No, I don’t think so. More like “Hot Mess.”
 
Grade: D

(Rated PG-13 for sexual content, violence, language and some drug material.)

Hall is a syndicated columnist in South Georgia.