Morning Glory – Movie Review

A great cast and cute premise sets the stage for disappointment in this unwieldy and unfunny look at morning television. The public idea that all anchors fight until the red light goes is an ancient one that is a bit too easy to pillage. Having worked in a newsroom for years, I can say that this is an inauthentic view of that rarified world. The way it’s shown, a hostile, inhumane, lazy environment is true some of the time but certainly not all the time as suggested here.

Rachel McAdams plays a New Jersey morning show produce who gets a shot at the big time, executive producing a morning show along the lines of Today. She is stone cold flibberty gibbet whose flying hands, wild eyes, weird gestures and screechy voice denote Nervous / New / Too Young in ways that leave no doubt.

Her exhausting overacting continues throughout the movie. She has a squirmingly awkward romance with another producer (Patrick Wilson) that comes from nowhere and seems to fly in the face of her lofty ambitions.

Harrison Ford as the crusty award-winning news anchor, the conventional gruff greybeard who’s been tossed to the minors – the morning show – is all anger, and he never lets up, making his one of the most uncomfortable screen personas of all time. He doesn’t learn or progress and that’s just dead air. He’s too unrelenting obnoxious to stir any identification with the audience who otherwise might sympathize with his fading fortunes.

However, his morning show co-host played with relish is Diane Keaton. She’s a dream, bringing fresh air into this stale piece; she’s wacky, amusingly bitter, and loveable, and when she’s off screen, well, she’s missed terribly.

Keaton has never made a secret of her age (now 64) and it’s given her a certain freedom, she goes for the gusto never letting it get her character down or threaten her television career. The idea that age and experience trump callow youth would work here if it weren’t for Fords’s lame and disagreeable character, a guy who won’t do the job without griping.

Good news is that Jeff Goldblum and Patti D’Arbanville do some fine pitching for the elder team. These two refuse to pander and deliver the goods.

It’s hard to understand that director Roger Michael made such a misstep, with this unfunny romcom, having made Notting Hill, Changing Lanes and the truly remarkable Venus. McAdams seems to be a weak link, and is now being quoted in interviews as saying she isn’t as “high-strung” as her character; a little damage control, we‘re guessing.

Still the jangled nerves McAdam’s acting causes in this false news world create a perfect storm of annoyance as we wait for Keaton to appear again or the movie to end.

Written by Aline Brosh McKenna

Directed by Roger Michel

Cast: Rachel McAdams ... Becky Fuller

Noah Bean ... First Date

Harrison Ford ... Mike Pomeroy

Jack Davidson ... Dog Walking Neighbor

Diane Keaton ... Colleen Peck

Vanessa Aspillaga ... Anna

Patrick Wilson ... Adam Bennett

Jeff Goldblum ... Jerry Barnes

Source: M&C