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 Full
disclosure: I admit to being taken with Rachel McAdams’
adorableness. In films like Red Eye {2005}, State of Play {2009}
and The Time Traveler’s Wife {2009} she demonstrates a sweetness
and winning charm that makes her likeable even as the meanest of Mean
Girls {2004} and made The Notebook{2004} one of the most
adored romances of recent years. It is then utterly dumbfounding that a
film like Morning Glory that should have been tailored to McAdams’
perkiness and charisma could go so terribly wrong and truss McAdams in
the most irritating role I’ve seen her play.
Morning Glory’s send-up of the world of morning television and what
contortions those behind the scenes will go through in order to save a
show from the clutches of cancellation has all the right ingredients:
Directed by Roger Michell who previously helmed the smash rom-com
Notting Hill {1999}, there’s McAdams as Becky, a hard-working --
i.e. obsessed -- young producer taking over a network early show on the
chopping block, Diane Keaton as the show’s vain, long-suffering host and
Harrison Ford as the disgruntled, cantankerous hard news man whose
unwilling participation as the programme’s new co-host will either hurry
the show to its end or save it. This great ensemble is padded out with
Jeff Goldblum as the dubious station manager and Patrick Wilson as a new
love for Becky. How then could it go wrong? I’ll tell ya how.
Michell took the charming McAdams and directed her to play her role as
if on speed. There is literally not one moment where Becky isn’t
bouncing around like a five year old in need of either Ritalin or the
bathroom, or spazzing out as if she’d bumped her head falling off the
turnip truck. She comes from morning television in New Jersey not
Podunk. Watching her freak out when she finds herself in an elevator
with Ford’s Mike Pomeroy, one of her journalistic idols is cringe-worthy
for many reasons; first because you wish Pomeroy had a taser to fend off
Becky’s scary enthusiasm, second because there’s no way that any
professional television producer, much less one just shy of thirty would
be caught dead embarrassing herself this way and next because we can see
from that early scene the level of inanity we’re going to be faced with
for the rest of the film. Bless her; McAdams throws herself heart and
soul into this irritating, hollow character, shining in those rare
moments where we see Becky actually has a brain and by rare I mean
perhaps two scenes. But Michell makes such a broad, slapsticky cake of
Becky that there’s no way anyone can identify with her because she’s an
utter caricature with no depth.
There
are some genuinely funny moments in Morning Glory, which would be any
time either Harrison Ford or Diane Keaton is on screen. Ford as the
fallen serious journalist is snarling, egomaniacal and cranky like the
love child of Dick Cheney and Sam Donaldson. His snipes and verbal
daggers at the relentlessly hyperactive Becky speak for the entire
audience. Diane Keaton plays a former beauty queen who would do any and
everything to stay on television. As Colleen Peck, the
perfectly-coiffed psychic spawn of Diane Sawyer and Mary Hart, Keaton
gives herself over to the screenplay; appearing in a Sumo wrestler’s fat
suit in one segment and throwing up hand signs with 50 Cent’s crew
during his musical cameo. Keaton looks to be having a good time,
especially when teamed with Ford during their co-hosting segments.
Their increasingly vitriolic and public on-air spats temporarily
resuscitate the film. The combination of Ford and Keaton is all sparks
and I would have been perfectly happy had the entire film been based
around these two warhorses from opposite ends of the news spectrum.
However, there is another grace to Morning Glory that could have saved
the entire movie had it been allowed full rein. Morning Glory’s best
segments run in the montage of Becky‘s improvements to the show, mostly
featuring Matt Malloy as the gentle, good-natured weatherman in a number
of increasingly death-defying activities. Malloy nearly steals the
entire picture and I demand a spinoff.
Still, regardless of the
brilliance of Ford, Keaton or even Malloy, there’s nothing much that can
be done for Morning Glory because it’s completely based around a
character that is utterly out of tone with the rest of the film and
sinks the overall project by annoying its audience out of any possible
affection for the character. What a shame.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
Nov.
10th, 2010
Click
here for our coverage of the Morning Glory Press Conference with
Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams and Patrick Wilson
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