REEL CRITIC:

“New In Town” applies the cookie-cutter approach to the soft dough of a romantic comedy recipe. Renée Zellweger plays a hotshot executive in a Miami corporation. A chance to climb the corporate ladder sends her to a small town in Minnesota where the “fish out of water” subplot begins.

Her special project involves a low-tech food processing plant that is headed for downsizing. She meets a wholesome union worker at the plant played by Harry Connick Jr. Romance soon follows as the formula requires.

All the town folk start talking about them in good old down-home Minnesota accents. There’s no shortage of shopworn Midwestern stereotypes. The characters are all good-natured, but seem like cardboard cutouts of real people.

It’s all totally predictable and contrived, but remains sweet and inoffensive. The clichés drip down the screen like warm honey. It’s a very soft PG movie. But if you’re not careful, your brain could turn to mush just watching this fluff.

‘Taken for a wild ride

“Taken” is a rousing action flick in the tradition of the “Bourne” trilogy with lots of chases, jittery camera work and swarthy bad guys. It does have a solid leading actor in Liam Neeson and at 94 minutes, doesn’t leave time to question plausibility. Just hang on to your popcorn and let your mind be a blank.

Bryan Mills (Neeson) is a former CIA “preventer” who’s retired to Los Angeles to be near teenage daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). With some misgivings, he consents to let her go to Paris with a girlfriend.

The girls barely arrive at their posh flat when armed men break in. In the film’s most terrifying scene, Kim makes a frantic call to daddy who tells her she has only seconds before she will be abducted. He instructs her to leave her phone on, which forces Bryan to have to listen helplessly to his daughter’s screams, but also gives him a convenient plethora of clues.

In no time our strapping 6-foot-4 hero has killed or maimed dozens across the continent in his quest to find his little girl. A mad dad in action is a thing to behold, especially one with special talents as a lean, mean killing machine. Bullets bounce off him; and no car or fist can mess up his face or wardrobe.

The action is slick and one-sided and as cartoonish as the plot about an Albanian white slavery ring. Can we get this guy to find Bin Laden?

JOHN DEPKO is a Costa Mesa resident and a senior investigator for the Orange County public defender’s office. SUSANNE PEREZ lives in Costa Mesa and is an executive assistant for a financial services company.