This is not a “review,” okay? Definitely not a review. Call it an enthusiasm spasm. The point is that Roger Michell‘s Morning Glory (Paramount, 11.12) is much better than what Paramount’s marketing has so far indicated, and a tiny bit better than what that Showeast guy told TheWrap‘s Steve Pond a week or so ago.
The exhibitor said “it’s close to James L. Brooks territory, or to the border between Brooks and Nancy Meyers” and “a solid entertainment that in November will appeal to the over-30 audience in a way that nothing else will.” Total agreement with the second statement, but forget the Nancy Meyers analogy. This film is close to Broadcast News-level Brooks + grade A, totally-on-his-game Michell + Harrison Ford‘s best performance in years + Rachel McAdams giving an ever better performance than she did in The Wedding Crashers (and that’s saying something).
Ford’s performance as a grumpy, past-his-prime, Dan Rather-ish newsman has a shot at a Best Supporting Actor recognition. Or not. He’s surly but smirking all the while. The role as written isn’t quite home-run-level, but it’s fair to call it a solid triple, I think.
That’s all I have time to say before the next movie starts, but I just had to counteract the impression I gave when I posted this 10.19 story, which was mainly a reaction piece to the one-sheet. No offense but the one-sheet “lies,” in a sense. Morning Glory is much smarter, more more realistic, and much more adult in a spritzy and reasonably real-world sense than you might expect.
I was afraid of screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna in the wake of 27 Dresses, but what a surprise! In the realm of commercial confections about big-city, fast-lane ambition, Morning Glory is a notch or two above McKenna’s The Devil Wears Prada. It’s somewhat similar in terms of the choice that the main character faces between an exciting career and a strong personal relationship, but it resolves this situation more satisfyingly, I feel, and Patrick Wilson plays a much cooler and more interesting boyfriend that Adrian Grenier played in Prada.
