Morning Glory Review

The setup for Morning Glory seems promisingly funny, if unlikely to rip up any rulebooks. Roger Michell (Notting Hill) directs spunky television producer Rachel McAdams, who is given a tough break in charge of an ailing breakfast television programme (which, in an amusing coincidence, is called Day Break), to which she manages to lure Harrison Ford’s crotchety and serious newscaster as a new presenter. Ford’s commitment to hard journalism and general misanthropy clashes with the triviality of the show, his co-anchor Diane Keaton and McAdams’s positivity. Comedy, surely, ensues.

It feels wrong to criticise a film that seems to try so hard and has plenty of good things going for it, but Morning Glory is terribly lacklustre, utterly predictable and painfully average. Those good things going for it include an impressive cast – Ford, Keaton and McAdams are flanked by Patrick Wilson and Jeff Goldblum – a buoyant central character and some amusing sparring between Keaton and Ford. The latter is wonderful on screen and draws attention like some sort of cinematic black hole, warping the very fabric of the film around him, to utilise a rather eccentric metaphor. His acerbic comments are delivered very amusingly. Keaton is another charismatic screen presence, but is underused. McAdams’s character is a reasonably decent female role model, but is reduced to waddling around in her pants in a couple of instances. There’s also an all too brief cameo fromModern Family’s Ty Burrell, arguably the funniest man in American television right now (though that is possibly not an argument you would win).

It comes as no surprise to learn that the film’s script is written by Aline Brosh McKenna of The Devil Wears Prada fame. No surprise, as the plot of Morning Glory is nearly identical – a young woman enters high powered workplace and experiences trouble with an older, unpleasant colleague. Eventually, however, she earns their respect and finds success and love. The plot goes nowhere you wouldn’t expect it to and a very false of jeopardy is created by some totally arbitrary deadlines. You’ll also see the final payoff coming a mile away.

The central conceit of Ford’s character – who pertains that the news is scared and under threat from the influence of crass entertainment – is rather undersold too: as McAdams further dumbs down Day Break, its ratings go up, yet there is little indictment of this or any negative outcome, or any real discussion of the issue at all. Surely a film should expect its audience to be able to handle a more complex debate than that?

Ultimately, the film is a disappointment, not really because it is particularly bad, but because it failed to live up to its potential, a true shame given the calibre and talents of its cast and of Harrison Ford in particular. One wonders how closely art imitated life in this film: was Ford unwillingly herded into a fluffy feature that is quite possibly beneath him? A bigger dose of his character’s nasty streak and a curbing of its more sentimental sensibilities would have doneMorning Glory a lot of good. As it stands, the edgiest thing about it is its poorly chosen title.