| Movie: | Did You Hear About The Morgans? |
| Company: | Columbia Pictures |
| Released: | 2009/12/18 |
| MPAA: | PG-13 |
| Director: | Marc Lawrence |
| Starring: | Hugh Grant Sarah Jessica Parker Sam Elliot Mary Steenburgen Wilford Brimley |
Did you hear about “Did You Hear About The Morgans?”? I'll bet if you haven't that you soon will. Let me see if I can sum it up for you in two words, "monumentally bad". Wait, let me see if I can sum it up for you in one word, "Ishtar". Columbia Pictures and Director Marc Lawrence offer up the romantic comedy, “Did You Hear About The Morgans?”, which promises to be the kind of bad which continues being discussed years after its DVD copies have been moved from the discount bin to the ash bin. We're talking epic fail here. We're talking there were people in the audience, other than me, laughing AT the movie. Every plot device was transparent. Every joke fell flat. It was an absolute train wreck. As my good deed for the day I recommended that a couple waiting for the next showing see another movie. I'm serious.
Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play Paul and Meryl Morgan, a narcissistic, upper west side Manhattan, power couple. They run their own companies. They have their own doting assistants. He's a corporate attorney. She's a real estate agent who hosts charity fundraisers and appears on the cover of The New Yorker. Yada, yada, yada. They are separated. They try to make up. They witness a murder. They are witnessed witnessing the murder. They witness the witnessing of their witnessing. See where I'm going here? They are taken into protective custody. They are relocated to Wyoming until the murderer is caught and brought to trial. They must suffer the indignities of a latte-less life amongst the hicks while their corporate assistants try to cover for their absence. It's hard for me to say if the formula or the pretension was worse.
Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen play Clay and Emma Wheeler, a Wyoming small town couple who host the Morgans at their safe-house. Director Marc Lawrence tries to portray the Wheelers as down-to-earth folksy and uncouth gun-nut bumpkins at the same time and fails at both. He succeeds only in displaying the same tired stereotypes which Hollywood and Manhattan hold of the people who live in “flyover country”. Every wall of every building in Wyoming has at least one trophy head mounted on it. The Wheeler's refrigerator is overfilled with locally butchered game meat. Meryl Morgan first sees Emma Wheeler inspecting a bolt-action rifle at a store counter and comments, “My God, it's Sarah Palin”. Meryl Morgan asks a diner proprietor, played by Wilford Brimley, not to smoke in his own establishment. Brimley's character snarks back, “Next thing you'll be telling us you're Democrats”.
There is good in everything though, and so it is with “Did You Hear About The Morgans?”. In this time of economic malaise, go see it if you have the time. You might find it that much easier to convince yourself, “It can only get better from here”.
| Hollywood, STFU Rating: |  | 3 Hammer and Sickles |
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