- Title: Morning Glory
- IMDB: link
Sometimes, I suppose, some people just need to watch a nice movie where nice people end up in nice places, despite not nice situations. Hollywood knows this, and they know it well. They crank out these nice movies like a long, processed line of uninterupted sausage, knowing it’ll find some sort of audience. It doesn’t matter if they’re using Grade A or Grade F meat, because this stuff is proven to do some business.
This can all be said of Morning Glory, a movie about a nice girl that, in the end, get’s everything nice that she deserves. That nice girl is played by Rachel McAdams, a young up-and-get’m who lands a job as Executive Producer on a morning news show ala Today, only one dying a slow, ratings-denied death. Things are bad enough before she takes a chance and hires Ted Koppel approximate Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), as a co-anchor. It turns out he hates soft news, and doesn’t care if the show stays on the air. Oh no, they might get canceled!
And, because women can’t be happy unless they have a man in their lives, McAdams’ character also meets a total stud, played by Patrick Wilson, who turns out to be perfect (and nice).
Morning Glory, from beginning to end, feels like an exercise in convention. Full of easy montages that relay the plot points we could all rattle off just from watching the trailer, it sometimes seems as though it aspires to be nothing more than a celebration of the cliché.
There’s no reason a clichéd movie can’t be great, though, and Morning Glory could have been worse. This is due, entirely, to its cast. With the peppy McAdams steering the ship, it’s not that difficult to root for the protagonist, even if none of the character’s troubles feel real. Similarly, I never mind watching Harrison Ford having a little bit of fun with a role, and I can say the same of Jeff Goldblum, who’s got a minor role. All the actors in the film have done far better, but can eek out a likable performance before their alarm clock wakes them up.
Morning Glory is the sort of movie you can tell, minutes in, that you won’t remember a year from now. But, hey, if I can watch a nice-looking, nice girl do nice things for ninety minutes, I suppose I’ll be complacent enough to stay in the theater until the credits roll.