Morning Glory
Rating: 6/10
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Jeff Goldblum, Patrick Wilson
Director: Roger Michell
So it's into the heady world of breakfast television we go with this frothy light comedy piece from the director of Notting Hill.
McAdams stars as Becky Fuller, a producer on a television news show. Fired from her current role, she ends up being offered the job as a producer on a failing show called DayBreak.
Single and not tied down by relationships or family, Fuller lives for the job and seizes the opportunity thrust her way by Jeff Goldblum's laconic TV exec Jerry Barnes. On her first day she fires weird co-anchor Paul McVee (played brilliantly by Modern Family's Ty Burrell) and suddenly finds she needs a co host for Diane Keaton's Colleen Peck.
Enter Harrison Ford's prickly and slightly bitter former news anchor Mike Pomeroy. Once a newsmaker and a newsbreaker, Pomeroy's in the twilight of his career and not willing to sacrifice news values for fluffier breakfast time pieces.
However, when Fuller's told DayBreak's on the verge of being cancelled, she realizes she has to do everything she can to get Mike into the swing of things to save all their jobs.
Morning Glory is as fluffy as the genre it's parodying but it's kept alive by the performances of both McAdams as the annoyingly perky and optimistic Fuller and Ford as the gruff and irritable co anchor Pomeroy. In fact it's probably fair to say it's more Ford's film as he has endless fun refusing to do stuff, compromise his ideals and values as well as be opposed to everything. He also gets the lion's share of the best lines too - with bon mots like "News is a sacred temple" and "Half your audience has lost the remote control - and the other half are waiting to be turned over by the nurse." It's that kind of sarcasm which pervades the script and keeps things going.
Diane Keaton is a little sidelined in this unfortunately - but it's a solid performance from her too.
Unfortunately the end of Morning Glory sinks into a schmaltzy mire (perhaps, inevitably) and the whole thing leaves a bit of a saccharine taste in your mouth - overall, Morning Glory may well appeal more to those in the television industry and the media who'll recognize the egos, the debates and the problems; the rest of us may well be wondering what else is on the other channel.
