Morning Glory: movie review
Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) is a plucky, newly hired workaholic producer for 鈥淒aybreak,鈥� the lowest-rated national morning TV show. The show is so bad that it鈥檚 a punch line in TV land 鈥� a sick joke.
鈥�Morning Glory鈥� is about how Rachel pulls the show out of the basement by, you guessed it, dumbing it down ever further into imbecility. This might be an acceptable premise for a comedy except for one thing: The filmmakers endorse the imbecility. 鈥淢orning Glory鈥� is a tribute to low standards and high ratings 鈥� just the sort of thing Hollywood can get firmly behind.
I realize this movie is, essentially, cotton candy, but it has an acrid aftertaste. Becky, a human whirligig epoxied to her BlackBerry, is portrayed as a vivacious sprite. Her anything-for-ratings ambition is supposed to be, well, cute.
Her big move comes when she pairs the morning show鈥檚 longtime, long-suffering host Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) with curmudgeonly blowhard Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), the network鈥檚 resident hard-news legend who has been sitting out his contract after being shifted out of his evening anchor spot. These cohosts despise each other. While Colleen is willing to don a fat suit and tussle on air with a sumo wrestler, the grave-faced Mike, who has won every journalism award known to man, won鈥檛 even do one of those obligatory cooking-class segments. (He won鈥檛 even utter the word 鈥渇luffy.鈥�)
Instead of standing up for the type of journalism that Mike represents, director Roger Michell and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (鈥�The Devil Wears Prada鈥�) denigrate him as a scowly relic from a distant era. The film鈥檚 payoff arrives on cue when, grudgingly, inevitably, he comes around.
Keaton at least looks as if she鈥檚 having fun as the alternately daffy and hard-edged former Miss Arizona who鈥檚 seen it all. Ford, however, keeps himself in a constant state of humorless high dudgeon, and his Scrooge routine gets very old very fast. He acts like someone who never told a joke 鈥� or heard one.
鈥淏roadcast News,鈥� of course, is the template for this movie, but a bit of 鈥�Network鈥� might have been welcome, too. The dismal dumbing-down that Paddy Chayefsky's 鈥淣etwork鈥� predicted for the future of TV has been more than fulfilled, but, whereas Chayefsky was mad as hell about it, the folks behind 鈥淢orning Glory鈥� are just fine with it.
Is it fair to judge a dippy romantic comedy by its ideas 鈥� or lack of them? I think it is, if, as is the case here, the ideas, such as they are, are central to the comedy. 鈥淢orning Glory鈥� isn鈥檛 targeting the dumbing down of TV news. It鈥檚 pandering to the audience that craves the dumbness. Grade: C- (Rated PG-13 for some sexual content, including dialogue, language, and brief drug references.)
