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Monday, December 21, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW
Did You Hear About The Morgans?

Carrie/Grant: You’re Not In Manhattan Anymore


Sarah Jessica Parker as Meryl Morgan and Hugh Grant as Paul Morgan in "Did You Hear About The Morgans?".    Sony

By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
Monday, December 21, 2009

Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant muck about in the rain, on the rodeo course and on the run from killers and bears in Marc Lawrence’s new film “Did You Hear About The Morgans?”, which opened last Friday across North America, but none of it -- as comedic as it may read here -- is funny at all.

Infidelity roils the marriage of the Manhattan-ite Morgans (Parker and Grant) and the fallout surrounding it is interrupted by a murder the couple witnesses.  The murderer sees them.  And from there a wild goose chase consisting of painfully unfunny one-liners and threadbare screenwriting unfolds as the troubled couple is ushered into a witness protection by the U.S. Marshals, which lands Paul and Meryl Morgan in Wyoming with new identities.  They are welcomed to the American west by a gun-toting Annie Oakley type (Mary Steenburgen) and her husband (Sam Elliott).

“Did You Hear About The Morgans?” suffers from the idea that it has something new to offer audiences, who’ve seen this movie before.  Films like “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Crocodile Dundee”, “The Out-Of Towners” (which the director wrote) and a hundred thousand others (including the Steve Martin-starrer “My Blue Heaven”) have played the fish-out-of-water theme song with varying degrees of success or failure.  When watching “Did You Hear…,” you get the sense its filmmakers are vigorously shaking a coin-filled tin can saying, “a penny for your laughs, please.”

The endless, needless cleavage shots and glimpses of women’s behinds are meant to somehow wake men from their slumber but even these sights don’t keep us from falling asleep.  (“Nine”, in context works better, at least, for its desired effect and main character’s viewpoint, if nothing else.)  The look-at-those-idiot-local-yokels cliché has also worn a gaping hole in the movie red carpet.

Ms. Parker’s Meryl comes across as a whiny drone and Mr. Grant’s British witticisms are as repetitive and one-dimensional as endless imitations of “Taxi Driver” character Travis Bickle’s “you talkin’ to me” line, which Mr. De Niro himself must cringe at each new time he hears it.  Mr. Grant, who appeared in the director’s “Two Weeks Notice” surely has other talents but with the exception of “Music And Lyrics” (which Mr. Lawrence also directed) audiences expecting originality from him will be disappointed. 

As for Ms. Parker, any of her “Sex And The City” fans bravely subjecting themselves to this messy material will be counting down to May 2010, when Carrie Bradshaw will be safely ensconced in Manhattan for more single adventures.

“Did You Hear About The Morgans?” is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of America for some sexual references and momentary violence.  The film’s duration is one hour and 43 minutes.



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Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar here.
   

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