As January comes to a close and grocery store candy aisles across the nation begin to look more and more like Cupid's paradise with every coming day, so does the weekend box office selection tilt more and more towards the red, white, and cute. More than any other time of year, our movies tell stories of fairytale romance, undying love, and, well, men of our dreams tied up in a bow and delivered on our doorstep. But this year, perhaps one of more interesting picks of the so-called stream of chick flicks and romcoms coming our way is one with a love story that is actually less about the man of our dreams and more about a love that reaches a bit wider.

The story of an up-and-coming corporate executive from Miami who agrees to temporarily relocate to the small town of New Ulm, Minnesota to oversee the town plant's reorganization, New in Town is a movie that could easily be many things. On the surface, it might seem like the perfect recipe for unexceptional laughs and a whole lot of fluff. With Lucy Hill's executive (Reneè Zellweger) set up opposite the town's hunky union representative Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick, Jr.), it could have easily been just another tale of opposites attract set within a relatively underdeveloped and interchangeable premise. But as screenwriter C. Jay Cox commented, the story is more of "a romance between Lucy and not just Ted, but this town," and with that distinction, New in Town becomes a romantic comedy that, while still fairly light and cute, stands out from the crowd.

From the moment Lucy arrives in New Ulm, New in Town is a classic case of a fish out of water and a clash of opposites. Lucy is used to morning runs on the beach. New Ulm is used to six-foot snow drifts and subzero temperatures. Lucy listens to Fergie and Britney. New Ulm listens to Gospel and Country. Lucy wears thongs. New Ulm wears long underwear. Lucy believes in doing a job, and New Ulm believes in making friends. Cue one amusingly awkward conversation involving both Lucy's relational and religious status barely five minutes after she has arrived in town. Jump to a volatile first meeting/blind date between Lucy and Ted. And include about as many Floridians-in-the-snow mishaps as you can imagine.

But as incongruous as Lucy and New Ulm are at first, as the story evolves, instead of hurriedly doing what she has to do to get out of the strange town as quickly as possible, Lucy finds herself becoming a part of it. While she may not be on the exact same musical, fashion, and religious page as her new friends, Lucy starts to see that in some of their differences are actually values she admires. And when her money-focused corporate objectives finally come to the point of threatening to destroy the new values of friendship and community that she has come to embrace, her response reveals that even in a world that must operate within the confines of business and commerce, the value of love need not be abandoned.

In most romantic comedies, the sad truth is that very often "love" is just something that happens. It is the final fifteen-minute realization that suddenly clicks into place and brings its two main characters together forever. But in New in Town, as one of my favorite Switchfoot songs puts it, love is truly a movement. While some of New Ulm's residents give Lucy a hard time, for the most part New Ulm takes very real action to show her that she is not alone and is welcome in their community. From the moment Lucy arrives in town, Blanche (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), the town's one-woman welcoming committee and Lucy's executive assistant, almost obtrusively does all she can to befriend and help Lucy. Within five minutes, she has taken on the double task of helping Lucy find a man and Jesus. When Lucy has a mishap in the snow, Ted comes to her rescue and the town embroiders their numbers on an "emergency contact" quilt just for her. And as Lucy reveals, such demonstrations of love do not go unnoticed.

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