Produced by JJ Abrams, directed by the guy who made Notting Hill and written by the woman who wrote The Devil Wears Prada; this potentially brilliant team brings us a cheerful workplace comedy that might not be ground-breaking cinema, but is delightfully entertaining and good fun.
A brilliant cast, including legends Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton, but it was women’s favourite Rachel McAdams who really stole the show. She plays the adorable and perky Becky Fuller, a frantic can-do television producer who dreams of producing the prestigious Today show. Desperate to succeed, she is wholly consumed by her thankless job at her local morning show in New Jersey, but when her boss calls her into his office for what she assumes to be a promotion, she is fired for cost-cutting reasons.
Despite being a dedicated workaholic, she has little experience to offer and after a hard struggle to find a job is offered the role as the latest in a long line of producers of Day Break, the fourth ranked national morning show “behind Today, Good Morning America and whatever they have on CBS” as her new boss (Jeff Goldblum) puts it. She has the impossible job of righting the sinking ship and goes to any lengths possible, no matter how degrading, to keep the show from being cancelled – queue a montage of cringing attempts to gain viewers.
After a promising start with Mean Girls, The Notebook and Wedding Crashers, Rachel McAdams career has been ill-served since then with disappointing characters in Sherlock Holmes and State of Play. However, in Morning Glory she gives a gusto performance as the determined woman struggling to prove she can succeed. She gives a believable performance that is both strong and insecure and is someone the audience can really get behind. Her performance seems effortless and her timing brilliant, and she manages to stay likeable throughout, separating her from the often annoying and obnoxious performances of similar romantic comedy stars Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl. Her relationship with the rest of the cast is both interesting and entertaining, and makes up for the lack of depth and development of the supporting characters.
After sacking her male presenter, Becky boldly decides to team up her only remaining anchor (Diane Keaton) with the Pullitzer-winning, grumpy news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), the “second worst person in the world” according to his former colleague and her soon to be boyfriend. The constant sparring between McAdams and Harrison and the bitter hatred between Keaton and Harrison is the driving force of the film and keeps the energy up throughout. While on his own Harrison is dull and monotonous, when playing off of these women he is entertaining and funny and their dialogue snappy.
The most disappointing part of the film is the half-arsed love story. As with The Devil Wears Prada, the romance felt like an unneeded subplot, because obviously women aren’t interested in a film unless there’s a love story! (I’m just glad they didn’t try to form a relationship between Keaton and Harrison). The original draft of the script didn’t even include a love story, and it shows. The under-written boyfriend part this time falls to Patrick Wilson, who is perfectly fine in the few scenes he is in, apart from the fact that he doesn’t have much of a character. He is the perfect guy, with a perfect job, a perfect body and perfect manners, who apparently has no hopes or dreams or even opinions, and is able to drop whatever is going on in his own life to magically appear by Becky’s side at important turning points in her life.
The film explores the failings of modern media through the dumbing down and the ceaseless dichotomy between information and entertainment. It is looked at as both a disappointment and a necessity in the current climate of crippling budgets and is shown to be both demeaning, with jokes about her eight segment orgasm series, and empowering, as she is able to prove her worth to the show through gaining figures with cringingly desperate infotainment. They never really answer the question of the fluffy banter and cold hard news rivalry, but after years of debate it would be difficult to do in a 107 minute comedy. The film also explores the fixed roles and silent assumptions of women in work. In the 1933 film of the same name, Katharine Hepburn played a talented actress struggling to be recognised for anything more than her looks. Eighty years on and little has changed.
Do not mistake this old-fashioned comedy for an award contending film, because it simply doesn’t aim to be one. A snobbier crowd will, without a doubt, deem this too shallow, cute and forgettable, but others will enjoy this as a well-executed, uplifting, feel-good comedy. The jokes aren’t the most original in cinema history, and the story is predictable, but the film still manages to be intelligent and broadly entertaining, delivering plenty of laughs from start to finish.
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