Dec. 23, 2009 - Issue #740: Wyld December
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
The disadvantaged duo at the heart of this story is Paul and Meryl Morgan (Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker), a typical pair of high-status New Yorkers who have been separated for several months.
Paul is attempting to regain the love and affection of Meryl through the tried and true method of harassment, and after what the audience is led to believe has been months of grand gestures and late-night phone calls filled with heavy breathing, Meryl finally relents and agrees to go on a dinner date. In typical New York fashion, the couple witnesses a murder on the walk home and must enter protective custody.
After a rather lackadaisical assassination attempt on Meryl, the Morgans are whisked away to Cody, Wyoming, to hide out until the killer is found. It's here that the couple works tirelessly to remind the audience of how different things are in New York, while Paul begrudgingly works to rekindle his marriage. I say begrudgingly because Hugh Grant clearly has no interest in sleeping with Sarah Jessica Parker, and approaches the romance like a child forced to eat his vegetables before he can have dessert.
Grant's characteristic short, British witticisms are half-heartedly delivered, and he spends more time looking at his shoes than his co-star, occasionally glancing at her only as if he's worried her gaze will turn him to stone.
The forced chemistry is as fake and ham-fisted as the movie's plethora of stock characters, each of whom has been designed to illustrate a single plot point in as stereotypical a fashion as possible. These needless additions only serve to make the film a convoluted mess, a problem that's exacerbated every time Meryl opens her mouth. She's dead-set on creating a complex back-story for herself worthy of a Grecian epic, and vastly exceeds the allotted plot points for a romantic comedy.
But worse than the problematic plot is that the writers were clearly aware of this fact and did little to remedy the problem. Rather than simplifying the story, they simply have the characters explicitly restate plot points in one-sided telephone conversations, making the already wooden-dialogue full-on oak.
In the end, the question isn't did you hear about the Morgans, but rather who actually cares? Only their would-be-assassin actually wants to know where they've gone, and even then it's because he seemingly has nothing better to do.
The film is marketed on the charm of its lead actors, but offers little else. If close-ups of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker is what you're after, you're better off with Google image search than this film.
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
Written and directed by Marc Lawrence
Starring Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker
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