Morning Glory (2010)

Sorry, this movie sucks

People are voting emotionally.

Let's be realistic.

Fantastic!

Rachel McAdams is atrocious, ruining this movie by overacting ditziness and scattiness to an absurd degree. She squeaks and squawks and flings her arms around like some kind of demented windmill. You find yourself mystified as to why Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford chose to dignify MORNING GLORY with their presence; and hoping against hope that Harrison's character would just shoot the babbling idiot of a protagonist.

Kind of hard to know whether to congratulate Morning Glory for being enjoyable - so dashed all-round pleasant - with such formulaic ingredients, or to condemn it for failing to be much better with ingredients that offered more.In title and intermittent breathlessness it's a call back to the screwball comedies of the 30s, but that only highlights how much it misses their sharpness of script.It doesn't seem to know what to do with any of the potential narrative trajectories, and ends up offering a kind of taster menu of each without any one satisfying. Whether or not peppy McAdams turns the failing show around may not be much of a surprise, but the pacing of the elements of it is. The relationship with Patrick Wilson - and its signposted points of tension - doesn't develop in any one direction. The relationship with Harrison Ford - the question of whether he's right to push serious news, or whether the breakfast pap is legitimate - tries clumsily to develop in both.McAdams carries the film with surprising zest, irrepressibly perky without being tiresome, principled and determined without being saccharine, able to make a fool of herself without losing charm. But the film's a tragic waste of her two senior co-stars.Harrison Ford's role as the legendary war reporter who can't believe he's reduced to the humiliating depths of breakfast-time lifestyle fluff is perfect for him. He can be obnoxiously grouchy in the safe knowledge that we all love him really; his real-life reputation and star persona make the grumpiness and the underlying fatherly wisdom equally credible, and he enjoys himself by never breaking the humourlessness. But the potential is wasted by episodes that don't exploit the comic potential, and a storyline that doesn't give him a clear enough journey. Diane Keaton, meanwhile - enough of a great to have immediate gravity, and a legendary comedienne - just disappears. Her character - its potential as sparring partner or lesson for Ford, or mentor for McAdams - barely exists. It's as if the producers were so busy congratulating themselves at such a brilliant pairing for the feuding TV anchors that they forgot to write the script for them.It's all congenial enough; but it promises champagne and delivers a nice cup of tea. (more at https://thescripthack.wordpress.com/)

Well, this movie was such awful that before writing this review, I checked between for the age gap between Harrison and Al Pacino (the older for 2 years). I did that because it's striking how their evolution are totally opposite. Decades ago, it was rather Harrison who was cool, compassionate while Al was cold, heartless. Today, far later in their career, Al keeps getting sweet and warmly whereas Harrison becomes totally grumpy! Here, the hero of my childhood is just despicable from start to finish and to make things worse, the story is totally a failure. We have to wait one hour to see actually Harrisson doing his first morning show which is however the main subject here and also that's left only 40 minutes to tell something! But Harrison isn't the only culprit here! If you take the sexy and energetic MacAdams, here she just can't give something emotional. So, it's long, it's dull, it's not funny and the prestigious cast can't save anything! If it's not the definition of a stinker, I don't know how to tell it other way!

Take a young, attractive, highly motivated would be television executive lacking any experience, add a fledging, soon to be cancelled television morning show and the following off-the-shelf characters: (1) an aging, grumpy investigative reporter past his prime, (2) a grumpy, aging talk show host equally past her prime and (3) a grumpy if not aging managing executive who, for unexplained reasons, hires our young, attractive, highly motivated but inexperienced lead as executive producer. Further add a few odd-ball straight-men for comic relief and a couple of reasonably good lines, "a couple" meaning "two", and presto: a further petri dish film is born.Given an eminently foreseeable story-line and one-dimensional characters, Ms McAdams, Mr Ford and Ms Keaton do a reasonable job attempting to breath some life into this film … but even defibrillators have a maximum setting … and for good reason; there is a point where honest attempts at resuscitation turn into superfluous and cruel mutilations of a corpse.