In case you haven’t heard about the Morgans, let me fill you in: this is an objectionably awful romantic comedy. Director Marc Lawrence is something of a rom-com auteur, receiving sole writing credit on this and his other two films, the decent-enough genre efforts Music and Lyrics and Two Weeks Notice. But his stock has really sunk with Did You Hear About the Morgans?, one of the very worst films of 2009.
Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker star as Paul and Meryl Morgan, a recently-separated New York couple. Paul wants to get back together. Meryl is willing to listen to him. Their assistants (Elizabeth Moss and Jesse Liebman) arrange a dinner for the two in the middle of their busy schedules. It doesn’t seem to be going so well, but the persistent Paul walks with Meryl to her next appointment anyway.
Only problem: Meryl’s next appointment drops dead from a second-story window. The couple get a good look at the killer, a hitman who conveniently pokes his head out the window before he takes off. The U.S. Marshals notify Paul and Meryl that this was a mafia hit, and that they’ll be coming after Paul and Meryl next because they witnessed the crime. They provide them with protection at their separate locations, but the same hitman comes back anyway for Meryl. Then the Marshals recommend the witness relocation program.
The Morgans isn’t horrible up to this point, but the premise makes not a lick of sense. Why doesn’t the damn hitman just go into hiding? End of movie. This was a mafia hit, and Paul and Meryl cannot connect the hitman to the mafia, they can only give the police a description of the hitman. Which they have likely already done. There is no reason for him to go back after them, it will only result in the likelihood of being caught. He goes away, he and his employers get away with murder.
Of course, the hitman goes after them anyway, even after they join the relocation program, it’s the only way for this idiocy to resolve itself. So Paul and Meryl get relocated to small town Wyoming, and this is when the movie really begins to go rotten.
Yes, it’s your standard-order fish-out-of-water comedy, with the busybody New York City folk thrown in with the good ol’ rural America boys. The movie is on autopilot for the remainder, and boredom soon sets in. But that doesn’t mean the movie can’t still insult our intelligence at every illogical-yet-predicable-because-we’ve-seen-this-movie-hundreds-of-times-before plot development, and offend both big city and small town folk equally. Comedy? You’ll get more laughs out of Deliverance.
Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen play the rugged law enforcement couple that take the Morgans in. There’s bear spray, misused by the Morgans. And a bear. Gun shootin’. Horse ridin’. Gruff old cigar chompin’ Wilford Brimley. The town nurse who doubles as the town waitress. There’s a hoe-down AND a rodeo. DVDs from Clint Eastwood AND John Wayne (scenes from The Searchers and Dirty Harry are the only fleeting moments of entertainment here). And overgrown bushy mustaches, big belt buckles, and cowboys hats, dear lord, the cowboy hats.
Would you believe that by the end of the film they use the old horse costume gag (Parker is the front, and Grant is the ass) and it isn’t meant to be ironic? No cliché is left unturned.
