Review of Morning Glory (2010) by Sam T — 09 Jul 2011

[65/C+] If you're willing to disregard some of the many flaws, the plot lapses, and the clutter of this chipper little movie, you will probably be pretty entertained. That's because, in spite of all the kinetic uneveness and overloaded cuteness of the story, the principal actors offer up a lot of very winning charisma with a few good laughs.

That's Rachel McAdams as the somewhat socially inept, always adorable, and not-to-be-underestimated lead character, and she's very good, if a bit over the top at times. The best moments of the film are when Harrison Ford is on screen, not too surprisingly, especially when he is juxtaposed with Diane Keaton (horribly under-utilized here) in scenes meant to evoke the familiar question of the value of substance versus entertainment in television, particularly of the morning medium.

Ford is funny. Unfortunately, Morning Glory is so eager to be sweet and cheerful, it never digs deep enough into any one theme in order to acquire a kind of truer dramatic substance, and ends up manifesting some of the vapidity and flightiness of the morning television shows it spoofs. It never really deals with the incipient love connection between the main character and a journalist hunk; nor does it have anything interesting to say about the news-&-information-versus-entertainment debate, rather throwing up its arms and jumping feet first into the nonsense.

Which brings up the question of why we should care about the main character's obsession and unstoppable ambition to produce such mediocre, lowest common denominator morning television in the first place. When the show gets (predictably) slated for cancellation during the course of the movie, I couldn't help but feel that it would be a really justified and sane decision to get it off the air as fast as humanly possible. McAdams is nevertheless so sparky and cute and sincere, and her relationship with Ford's curmudgeonly news anchor so odd, it's probably worth watching anyway.