DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? (Marc Lawrence 2009)

[Chris Knipp]

Marc Lawrence: Did You Hear About the Morgans?


SARAH JESSICA PARKER AND HUGH GRANT, UNCOMFORTABLE: NOT PRETTY

Review by Chris Knipp

This a lousy romantic comedy that makes the also current and pointless It's Complicated look like a masterpiece. When Roger Ebert, that kind man, hates a movie, you better be careful, and he comes pretty close to hating this one. He begins his review by wondering how it got made.

Did You Hear About the Morgans is built upon the premise that shared adversity brings people back together. The Morgans, Paul and Meryl, (Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker) are an estranged couple, died-in-the-wool high-end New Yorkers (he a top lawyer, she a leading "boutique" real estate broker) looking at a glamorous new apartment that she's in charge of selling. In the course of this outing, because the place has big windows, they glimpse a hired assassin killing somebody important, and he also glimpses them. The killer is vicious and remains on the loose, so they're in danger and voila! The witness protection program sends Paul and Meryl to Wyoming, where they're placed in the charge of an aggressively folksy cowboy couple, the husband and wife US Marshall team of Clay and Emma Wheeler (Sam Eliott, Mary Steenburgen) who take the city slickers in tow and show them how things are done in their world. Horses, ten-gallon hats, and rifle practice; wrangling bears; big breakfasts; rodeo clowns. Before you know it (well, not really: it actually takes way, way too long), in the course of dodging bullets and big animals, Paul and Meryl are cuddly again, and instead of divorce are contemplating adoption; they're returned to Manhattan and mercfully, but too late, the screen goes blank. Did you hear about the Morgans? No? Fine. Believe me, you're better off if you didn't.

What makes this movie a disaser isn't just how tired its premises are and how unfunny its situations. The main couple also has no chemistry. SJP is famously NYC, but Hugh Grant -- isn't he English? (Joke.) Somehow they don't seem remotely likely as a couple, even an estranged one, and even less likely as a reunited one. It's a stretch for him to be a passionate New Yorker. The situation induces neither curiosity nor sympathy. These actors never "become" their characters; Paul is just Hugh Grant and Meryl (bad choice of names there) remains Sarah Jessica Parker. These actors are hyper-famous. And what would we care if Hugh and Sarah were derailed from their limos and cell phones for a while? On the other hand, we wish they weren't. Their dilemma isn't fun. Both of them are sophisticates, and we like watching them deployed in confidence and charm, wearing smashing (or dashing) outfits in urban settings. They don't feel right wandering around in Ray, Wyoming, a place that's a more arid construct that even the most Hollywood version of the Big Apple. The movie trades on one cliché after another. But if we had a choice, we'd rather see Sarah and Hugh in a cliché New York than a cliché cow town, because they even with a lousy script, at least they'd be at home.

As the Variety reviewer puts it, "it's a dubious conceit that going cowboy is a cure-all." But let's also admit that Paul and Meryl (even the names are wrong) are not "going cowboy" here. They're simply confined to a cluttered little house and forced to wear western outfits. They're not experiencing anything. They're just being moved around.

Once they're clad in cowboy hats and aw-shucks duds, the hip actors become depressingly dull and drab. Nobody wants to see them like this. The viewer's mental post-mortems begins long before the movie drags to a close. To return to Ebert's opening question: Why, oh why, did this happen? Is there some ulterior motive? Ms. Parker is headed for another Sex and the City movie; it's been speculated this was to remind people of her existence in preparation for that more important event. Not a good reminder. Hugh? What? Needs the money? Oh dear. How sad hack work can be. These stars are worthy of much better.