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Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Sony Pictures // PG-13 // March 16, 2010
List Price: $34.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Film:
Many of you might've seen Bryan Spicer's For Richer or Poorer a few years back, the story of a wealthy but quarrelsome pair of married New Yorkers tossed into Amish country to ward off attention from the IRS. In being completely disconnected from their comfort zone, they discover a rekindling of their feelings within unlikely circumstances -- plowing fields and other shenanigans. It's a cute setting that takes then it-actors, Tim Allen from "Home Improvement" and post-"Cheers" Kirstie Alley in her "Veronica's Closet" days, and slaps them together in the midst of cheeky inanity that's, at least, mildly watchable. I mention this off the cuff comedy in a review of writer/director Marc Lawrence's Did You Hear About the Morgans? because it thrives off nearly the exact same premise as For Richer or Poorer with different Hollywood tentpoles, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, only I'd never imagine the day I'd pine for Amish Alley and Allen.
To be fair, this flick does raise a more believable scoop-'em-up-and-put'em-in-rural-America premise. Separated couple Paul (Grant) and real-estate bigwig Meryl (Parker) are wealthy socialites in New York, both running high-dollar businesses and doing important things -- though they just can't seem to make their relationship work, let alone iron out their fertility woes. On the walk home after a reconciliation dinner, one that reveals a glimmer of hope, they witness a mob execution -- and the killer -- as it happens from the banister of a high-rise apartment. To keep their heads down, until the police can wrangle together the folks that did this before Paul and Meryl are their next targets, they're sent to a safe house in the microscopic town of Ray, Wyoming under the witness protection program.
Situational "Green Acres"-like antics set in motion, especially with rigid, city-latched Meryl, as they deal with no internet, an absence of street noises, and lots of meat. Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen play the government-connected couple harboring the Morgans, Clay and Emma Wheeler, both defaulting to their de-facto charms -- Elliot mere steps away from his "Stranger" persona in The Big Lebowski -- as they show the Yankees how to shoot rifles and chop wood. Meryl and Paul, in eyeroll-worthy fashion, marvel over the cheapness of a sweater at a bulk-buy clone of Sam's Club, while endlessly focusing on signs that illustrate what to do in case of a bear encounter. It's all unflappably scattered atop a story where the couple are trying to rebuild their near-divorce marriage, circling around a bunch of obvious situational goofs that bide our times as a mob hitter (Michael Kelly) snakes around to discover where the Morgans have gone.
Let's make no delusions about the purpose behind Did You Hear About the Morgans?: the reason it even exists lies in the on-screen duo of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker. Both have become rom-com staples, from Grant's charming awkwardness in Bridget Jones' Diary and Love Actually to Parker's reign as a fashion-forward metro queen in "Sex and the City", so it was only a matter of time before they came together in a production that went for the throat of the genre's fandom. The problem lies in Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker having absolutely, unequivocally no chemistry to justify their head-butting, causing scenes where they intimately sit around a New York dinner table, prep for a run in the Wyoming wilderness, and eventually rediscover their feelings on a starry night to have as much of a quixotic link as pieces of sandpaper uncomfortably grating together. Even a heavily foreshadowed scene that could've been at least mildly funny, the bear "attack", shows the awkwardness of their sullen chemistry.
Alright, so the bigwig cornerstones of the film don't have chemistry. It could still float on its comedic delivery and devolve into an endless stream of chuckle-worthy send-ups of city-folk, prairie-life tomfoolery, right? In theory, I suppose, but not under this scripting from Miss Congeniality writer Lawrence. As our attention veers from Grant and Parker as a feasible item, it instead focuses on their characters' clumsiness in the Wyoming setting -- all through an unbearable stream of either hokey dialogue blurts or a cluster of unfunny, fall-face-flat one-liners from Grant's Paul. His pithy postscript lines come across as addendums to a conversation from, well, an unfunny attention monger, and they get insufferable in rather quick fashion. Even the derivative plot involving Meryl and Paul's love-strung assistants suffers from similar blunt-headedness, showcasing a gauche battle of the sexes across the board that's just unpleasantly wooden.
What Did You Hear About the Morgans? becomes, as plot hiccups arise more and more, is an imperceptive brew of stilted humor and feeble romance that'll easily linger as one of 2009's worst films. Every speedbump that it attempts to muscle past -- a ditzy nurse/waitress/fire marshal popping up everywhere, a two-person horse costume sequence at a rodeo, and the inanity in the way that the Morgans are discovered in hiding -- drag it down further as the romantic chemistry agonizingly flounders about. It's a familiar story that's told without gusto, losing energy and going through the motions as if both it and we know exactly what's going to happen. Some satisfaction will be had in Wilford "Diabetes" Brimley popping up in cowboy garb, along with the instinctive charm from Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen, but the focal bits and pieces of this comedic calamity are enough to mask even these minuscule little delights.
The Blu-ray:
Video and Audio:
For a film that's this recent, Did You Hear About the Morgans? doesn't look exceptionally pleasing in its 2.35:1 1080p AVC visualization. It can be rather soft at many times throughout the film, while offering very glossy facial textures and some rickety instances of color solidity. Most colors, however, do vividly jump from the image, while some close-ups look better than others -- such as most of the instances taking place in the New York real estate office. On the whole, it'll serve its purpose, but a film released last year shouldn't exhibit this many instances of hazy detail and murky textures.
Audio fairs a bit better in its DTS HD Master Audio track, fittingly dialogue-heavy and crisp where it needs to be. A few sequences tap into sound dynamism, such as a bear's roar and the ambience of a country festival / concert. Some separation occurs when music enters into the picture, fluttering to the rear channels, while sounds like the rattle of BINGO apparatus and the clanking of horseshoes against a metal pole support nice clarity. Serviceable best fits a description of this track, and it'll work the ways in which it needs to for a screening of the film. Subtitles in English, English SDH, and French are available.
Special Features:
Commentary with Director Lawrence, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker:
The trio start their discussion at the beginning of the film by discussing that the opening phone call was a "band aid" in attempting to fix the film, leading us to believe that this commentary track might just be an interesting, "forgive us" type of track. Though energetic throughout most of their chat, the rest of the material between to peter towards idle chatter about their experiences on-set. Though, however, they mostly steer away from insight and more on stuff like cell phone dead zones, people being in a bad mood, and golf-clapping repeatedly to the actors on-screen. A few bits enter into the mix that can be cute and insightful, such as referring to a scene Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker were in as being like having "steak and ice cream on a plate" and about finding a town named "Roy" instead of "Ray", but they're few and far between.
A few Featurettes are included that focus on specific elements of assembling the film, such as the all-encompassing piece Location, Location, Location! (18:43, HD MPEG-2) that zeroes in on Marc Lawrence and his two-fer casting of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker. Several others are included -- Cowboys and Cosmopolitans (8:05, HD MPEG-2) that covers the actors more thoroughly, Park Avenue Meets the Prairie (5:02, HD-MPEG-2) in designing the film and dressing Sarah Jessica Parker in non-carrie garb, and A Bear of a Scene (5:21, HD MPEG-2) that covers shooting the bear scene -- that are generically handled but offer a few nice behind-the-scenes glimpses and moderate interviews. What's interesting about all of 'em is how it shows that Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker do,in fact, have chemistry that just doesn't translate on-screen.
We've also got two Deleted Scenes (4:30, HD MPEG-2), a series of Outtakes (6:41, HD MPEG-2), a very generic International Special (13:46, HD MPEG-2), and several Previews -- non of which, however, are for Did You Hear About the Morgans?.
Final Thoughts:
Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker can be charming under the right conditions, but clearly not with each other on-screen and under this type of scripting. Did You Hear About the Morgans?, as a result, is uncomfortably void of laughs and chemistry, even though it tries without relent to make it all work. There are several other variations on the urbanites-in-rural-America theme, and I urge you to seek those out long before venturing into this boggled comedy. Skip It.
Thomas Spurlin, Staff Reviewer -- DVDTalk Reviews | Personal Blog/Site
Many of you might've seen Bryan Spicer's For Richer or Poorer a few years back, the story of a wealthy but quarrelsome pair of married New Yorkers tossed into Amish country to ward off attention from the IRS. In being completely disconnected from their comfort zone, they discover a rekindling of their feelings within unlikely circumstances -- plowing fields and other shenanigans. It's a cute setting that takes then it-actors, Tim Allen from "Home Improvement" and post-"Cheers" Kirstie Alley in her "Veronica's Closet" days, and slaps them together in the midst of cheeky inanity that's, at least, mildly watchable. I mention this off the cuff comedy in a review of writer/director Marc Lawrence's Did You Hear About the Morgans? because it thrives off nearly the exact same premise as For Richer or Poorer with different Hollywood tentpoles, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, only I'd never imagine the day I'd pine for Amish Alley and Allen. To be fair, this flick does raise a more believable scoop-'em-up-and-put'em-in-rural-America premise. Separated couple Paul (Grant) and real-estate bigwig Meryl (Parker) are wealthy socialites in New York, both running high-dollar businesses and doing important things -- though they just can't seem to make their relationship work, let alone iron out their fertility woes. On the walk home after a reconciliation dinner, one that reveals a glimmer of hope, they witness a mob execution -- and the killer -- as it happens from the banister of a high-rise apartment. To keep their heads down, until the police can wrangle together the folks that did this before Paul and Meryl are their next targets, they're sent to a safe house in the microscopic town of Ray, Wyoming under the witness protection program.
Situational "Green Acres"-like antics set in motion, especially with rigid, city-latched Meryl, as they deal with no internet, an absence of street noises, and lots of meat. Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen play the government-connected couple harboring the Morgans, Clay and Emma Wheeler, both defaulting to their de-facto charms -- Elliot mere steps away from his "Stranger" persona in The Big Lebowski -- as they show the Yankees how to shoot rifles and chop wood. Meryl and Paul, in eyeroll-worthy fashion, marvel over the cheapness of a sweater at a bulk-buy clone of Sam's Club, while endlessly focusing on signs that illustrate what to do in case of a bear encounter. It's all unflappably scattered atop a story where the couple are trying to rebuild their near-divorce marriage, circling around a bunch of obvious situational goofs that bide our times as a mob hitter (Michael Kelly) snakes around to discover where the Morgans have gone.
Let's make no delusions about the purpose behind Did You Hear About the Morgans?: the reason it even exists lies in the on-screen duo of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker. Both have become rom-com staples, from Grant's charming awkwardness in Bridget Jones' Diary and Love Actually to Parker's reign as a fashion-forward metro queen in "Sex and the City", so it was only a matter of time before they came together in a production that went for the throat of the genre's fandom. The problem lies in Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker having absolutely, unequivocally no chemistry to justify their head-butting, causing scenes where they intimately sit around a New York dinner table, prep for a run in the Wyoming wilderness, and eventually rediscover their feelings on a starry night to have as much of a quixotic link as pieces of sandpaper uncomfortably grating together. Even a heavily foreshadowed scene that could've been at least mildly funny, the bear "attack", shows the awkwardness of their sullen chemistry. Alright, so the bigwig cornerstones of the film don't have chemistry. It could still float on its comedic delivery and devolve into an endless stream of chuckle-worthy send-ups of city-folk, prairie-life tomfoolery, right? In theory, I suppose, but not under this scripting from Miss Congeniality writer Lawrence. As our attention veers from Grant and Parker as a feasible item, it instead focuses on their characters' clumsiness in the Wyoming setting -- all through an unbearable stream of either hokey dialogue blurts or a cluster of unfunny, fall-face-flat one-liners from Grant's Paul. His pithy postscript lines come across as addendums to a conversation from, well, an unfunny attention monger, and they get insufferable in rather quick fashion. Even the derivative plot involving Meryl and Paul's love-strung assistants suffers from similar blunt-headedness, showcasing a gauche battle of the sexes across the board that's just unpleasantly wooden.
What Did You Hear About the Morgans? becomes, as plot hiccups arise more and more, is an imperceptive brew of stilted humor and feeble romance that'll easily linger as one of 2009's worst films. Every speedbump that it attempts to muscle past -- a ditzy nurse/waitress/fire marshal popping up everywhere, a two-person horse costume sequence at a rodeo, and the inanity in the way that the Morgans are discovered in hiding -- drag it down further as the romantic chemistry agonizingly flounders about. It's a familiar story that's told without gusto, losing energy and going through the motions as if both it and we know exactly what's going to happen. Some satisfaction will be had in Wilford "Diabetes" Brimley popping up in cowboy garb, along with the instinctive charm from Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen, but the focal bits and pieces of this comedic calamity are enough to mask even these minuscule little delights.
The Blu-ray:
 |  |
Video and Audio:
For a film that's this recent, Did You Hear About the Morgans? doesn't look exceptionally pleasing in its 2.35:1 1080p AVC visualization. It can be rather soft at many times throughout the film, while offering very glossy facial textures and some rickety instances of color solidity. Most colors, however, do vividly jump from the image, while some close-ups look better than others -- such as most of the instances taking place in the New York real estate office. On the whole, it'll serve its purpose, but a film released last year shouldn't exhibit this many instances of hazy detail and murky textures.
Audio fairs a bit better in its DTS HD Master Audio track, fittingly dialogue-heavy and crisp where it needs to be. A few sequences tap into sound dynamism, such as a bear's roar and the ambience of a country festival / concert. Some separation occurs when music enters into the picture, fluttering to the rear channels, while sounds like the rattle of BINGO apparatus and the clanking of horseshoes against a metal pole support nice clarity. Serviceable best fits a description of this track, and it'll work the ways in which it needs to for a screening of the film. Subtitles in English, English SDH, and French are available.
Special Features:
Commentary with Director Lawrence, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker:
The trio start their discussion at the beginning of the film by discussing that the opening phone call was a "band aid" in attempting to fix the film, leading us to believe that this commentary track might just be an interesting, "forgive us" type of track. Though energetic throughout most of their chat, the rest of the material between to peter towards idle chatter about their experiences on-set. Though, however, they mostly steer away from insight and more on stuff like cell phone dead zones, people being in a bad mood, and golf-clapping repeatedly to the actors on-screen. A few bits enter into the mix that can be cute and insightful, such as referring to a scene Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker were in as being like having "steak and ice cream on a plate" and about finding a town named "Roy" instead of "Ray", but they're few and far between.
A few Featurettes are included that focus on specific elements of assembling the film, such as the all-encompassing piece Location, Location, Location! (18:43, HD MPEG-2) that zeroes in on Marc Lawrence and his two-fer casting of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker. Several others are included -- Cowboys and Cosmopolitans (8:05, HD MPEG-2) that covers the actors more thoroughly, Park Avenue Meets the Prairie (5:02, HD-MPEG-2) in designing the film and dressing Sarah Jessica Parker in non-carrie garb, and A Bear of a Scene (5:21, HD MPEG-2) that covers shooting the bear scene -- that are generically handled but offer a few nice behind-the-scenes glimpses and moderate interviews. What's interesting about all of 'em is how it shows that Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker do,in fact, have chemistry that just doesn't translate on-screen.
We've also got two Deleted Scenes (4:30, HD MPEG-2), a series of Outtakes (6:41, HD MPEG-2), a very generic International Special (13:46, HD MPEG-2), and several Previews -- non of which, however, are for Did You Hear About the Morgans?.
Final Thoughts:
Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker can be charming under the right conditions, but clearly not with each other on-screen and under this type of scripting. Did You Hear About the Morgans?, as a result, is uncomfortably void of laughs and chemistry, even though it tries without relent to make it all work. There are several other variations on the urbanites-in-rural-America theme, and I urge you to seek those out long before venturing into this boggled comedy. Skip It.
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