Did You Hear About the Morgans? (*½)

Directed by: Marc Lawrence

Starring: Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sam Elliot, Mary Steenburgen, Kim Shaw, Elisabeth Shaw

Seen: January 27^th 2010

*½ Out of ****

Hugh Grant is pretty entertaining, even though he usually plays one role, the funny and awkward guy who makes witty remarks about pretty much everything. His comedic timing is great, and his delivery of one-liners always makes me grin. Pity he’s the same in every movie though, and in this one he’s Paul Morgan, a New York lawyer trying to get back with his wife who he cheated on. The same goes for Sam Elliot, who can play the part of the wise old man without breaking a sweat by now, here the sheriff of Ray, Wyoming, Clay Wheeler. Mary Steenburgen is Emma Wheeler, the gun-totin’ wife of Sheriff Wheeler, and even though she has only a small part, it is an endearing one. Sarah Jessica Parker, however, is not my favourite actress. In fact she does not even rank on the list of actresses I can remotely bare. She is more like nails across a black-board; every time she talks, no exceptions. Here she is Meryl Morgan, the (you guessed it) annoying romantic lead.

Paul and Meryl Morgan are on the verge of a divorce and Paul is trying everything he can think of to try and convince Meryl otherwise, but she only wants to see him suffer. One evening after dinner together, they witness a murder and only just escape with their lives. They are rushed into witness protection, and shipped off to ray, Wyoming, a very small cowboy town. Here the two must spend a week before being more permanently relocated to separate locations, as Meryl cannot stand the thought of spending the rest of her life with her husband. But wait, there’s more! Not only do we have a very simply plotted romance, but also an even more simply plotted survive the contract killer sent after you “thriller” (and here I have to apologise to the word thriller, for using it in this context).

Obviously, said killer comes after them, but he is only aided in his murderous quest by absolute stupidity from the leads. When you are in witness protection, it should come as no surprise that you should in no way try to contact anyone from your “previous” life. Not these guys. They are idiots. Or is it the writer who simply cannot do better than an extremely dumbed down version of a paint-by-numbers story to advance his nowhere plot? And I mean really dumbed down – the witness protection angle of the story is only believable because the movie says that they are being protected – would the authorities ever simply drop their star witnesses at a random airport and leave before they are even into the very small terminal where one deputy is sitting; asleep? Would these same people be allowed to wander a town full of phones unsupervised if they made clear their numb-skulled intent to call the outside world? Why to a lot of things in fact…

Did You Hear About the Morgans? is not even a good title, as more emphasis is placed on where this line comes from in the trailer than in the actual movie (it is used once in the movie, by an irrelevant side character, who also form part of another stupid mini-plot in the movie). Maybe they were trying to distract the viewer from the fact that there is no chemistry between Grant and Parker, not even a little bit. Maybe they wanted it to sound funny. They should have used a Hugh Grant line for that, maybe then… no, nothing could pick up this movie. It generates a few laughs, (maybe two or three) but nothing more.