moonspinner55
Marc Lawrence wrote and directed this mostly unamusing comedy about a soon-to-be-divorced couple from the Big Apple (the wife a hotshot real estate broker so popular she rates a magazine cover, and the husband a cheating lawyer with a British accent who still loves his spouse) stumbling upon the murder of the wife's latest client and being placed in the Witness Protection Program. Transferred to small-town Wyoming, the couple shoot guns, ride horses, and fend off a bear while the audience waits for the New York hit-man to eventually track them down. Improbable, to say the least, but for the first hour not terrible. Sarah Jessica Parker dithers and fidgets too much, but she's a bright presence and gets her share of laughs (particularly when her penthouse is invaded and she makes a funny escape from her balcony). I'm not certain whether Hugh Grant is typecast or miscast here (perhaps he's a bit of both). Grant is such an inactive presence in the proceedings, and so unhappy on-screen, that he drains the fun from the movie's fish-out-of-water second-half; he doesn't even make much of an effort to click with Parker, and his big comic scenes (particularly the one with the bear) fall flat. Lawrence sets up the City Folks vs. Rural Folks clichés without any snap, and the redneck stereotypes (such as Wilford Brimley's disgruntled Republican) are bummers. A few laughs early on, but the picture doesn't stay the course. It should be relegated to Witless Protection Program. *1/2 from ****
juneebuggy
Okay, this was about as bad as I expected it to be although I did enjoy the Ray, Indiana townsfolk, in particular Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen who saved this from being unwatchable. Sarah Jessica Parker was essentially her Sex & The City character with a bad wig (what was up with her hair?) And Hugh Grant, jeez he was terrible, barely present for most of the movie, just wooden, seemingly bored and going through his usual bumbling Hughism's. Yup I was rooting for the bear.I often wonder why the studios even bother making these kind of movies, I mean they must know going in its going to be awful, its not like the script was original or even funny.In this fish out of water scenario a New York couple relocate to Wyoming under the witness protection program after seeing a murder. Despite the hassles, the change in scenery may save their marriage. -but due to zero chemistry between said couple, I think not. 2/11/14
James Hitchcock
"Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is a "comedy of remarriage", that sub-genre of the romantic comedy which deals with a divorced or estranged couple rediscovering their love for one another. The heyday of such films was in the thirties and forties- in 1940 alone Cary Grant made three films of this type, "My Favourite Wife", "His Girl Friday" and "The Philadelphia Story"- but they have never gone away, "Bird on a Wire" and "Sweet Home Alabama" being examples from recent decades. As will be seen, both of these films have something else in common with "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" The couple in question here are two successful, affluent New Yorkers, Paul Morgan, a lawyer, and his wife Meryl, a real estate broker. (A profession which always seems much more glamorous and prestigious in America than it does in Britain). The two have recently separated due to Paul's infidelity, but he still harbours hopes of a reconciliation, and persuades Meryl to have dinner with him one night. On the way home, however, they are witnesses to the murder of a gangland figure (who also happens to be one of Meryl's clients) and are forced to enter the Witness Protection Programme when they are targeted by a contract killer. ("Bird on a Wire" also dealt with the Witness Protection Programme).Paul and Meryl are given new identities, relocated to the (fictional) small town of Ray, Wyoming and placed temporarily under the protection of local sheriff Clay Wheeler and his deputy Emma, who also happens to be Clay's wife. Much of the humour in the film derives from the contrasts between life in the big city and life in a small Western town, as the Morgans have an encounter with a grizzly bear and try, without much success, to learn how to chop wood, fire a rifle and ride a horse.Like "Sweet Home Alabama", this film takes a romantic-comedy look at America's culture wars, and does so from a relatively conservative viewpoint, something of a rarity in predominantly liberal Hollywood. "Sweet Home Alabama" satirises big city liberalism in the person of a snobbish and hypocritical New York mayor who panders to, but secretly despises, the working-class voters who keep her in power. "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is less concerned to satirise city ways than to paint a positive picture of small-town life, again something of a rarity in Hollywood, which frequently makes small-town America the butt of some mordant, and often unfair, satire.Paul is relatively laid-back about politics; indeed, like most characters played by Hugh Grant he is fairly laid-back about everything. Meryl, however, finds herself at odds with most of the local people. She is an agnostic, a vegetarian, a supporter of gun control and a Democrat. (Was she, I wonder, named after Meryl Streep, one of Hollywood's most noted liberals?) They, by contrast, are God-fearing, carnivorous, gun-owning, patriotic and overwhelmingly Republican. (We learn that there are only fourteen Democrats in the entire town- or rather thirteen, one having just died). Yet despite these seemingly fundamental differences in outlook, Paul and Meryl quickly become friends with her new neighbours- and at the end of the day it is those neighbours and their guns which save them when the assassin comes looking for them.This was the third film directed by Marc Lawrence; the other two were "Two Weeks Notice" and "Music and Lyrics", both of which were also romantic comedies starring Grant. It gathered some unenthusiastic reviews from the critics and seems to be unpopular on this site, where it current rating is only 4.5. In my view, however, it is reasonably enjoyable rom-com, far more so than "Two Weeks Notice", which I disliked. (I have never seen "Music and Lyrics").Sarah Jessica Parker has never been my favourite actress, possibly because I generally associate her with that tedious sitcom "Sex and the City", but at least she makes a more lively and interesting heroine than did the terminally dull Sandra Bullock in "Two Weeks Notice", and Grant seems to have recaptured his normal easygoing charm which had clearly deserted him in the earlier film. The best acting comes from Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen as Clay and Emma, the solid and decent small-town couple who show that they are far from being the slow-minded hayseeds which Paul and Meryl initially take them for. The film's political and social themes are not dealt with in any great depth, but they do help to make this film rather more interesting than a lot of recent rom-coms. 6/10
