Movie Review: Did You Hear About the Morgans?

LITTLE ROCK — Did You Hear About the Morgans? is one of those depressingly mediocre movies that bears all the hallmarks of a cynical enterprise.

A friend in Hollywood told me last summer to expect a lot of “recession” movies - movies contrived to provide all those involved with a quick paycheck - in the coming months and I’m guessing this is what he meant.

There’s absolutely nothing inspired about the film, which might have been cast by a focus group, and a frightening lack of chemistry between the two leads. Hugh Grant seems determined to pushthe boyish shtick into advanced middle age and Sarah Jessica Parker seems reconciled to her statusas the poor person’s Jennifer Anniston.

But what’s truly sad about the film is its utterly by the numbers script, which does nothing to subvert the audience’s expectations or gin up any real human feeling. It’s dumb in a lazy way, in a way that begs our indulgence. After all, who needs wit when you’ve got Grant’s limey fussiness and Parker’s patented pouting frown of romantic disappointment.

As the titular Morgans, Hugh and Sarah are a New York power couple teetering on the verge of divorce - he’s a lawyer, she’s the real estate queen of the East Side - when, after a tentative attempted reconciliation dinner, they happen to witness a murder and are immediately swept away into the federal witness relocation program. (Don’t ask how this particular crime falls under federal jurisdiction. Or why the truckdriver who pulls away at an inconvenient time for the Morgans isn’t at least as important a witness as they are. Or even how come, in one shot, they’re about to flee the crime scene in a taxi and in the next they’re being interviewed by a U.S. marshal on the site.)

Next thing you know, they’re being whisked off to rural Wyoming to play out the fish out of water conventions of city slickers in the sticks. No cell phones, no e-mail - no assistants! It’s like Green Acres, only with a twist - you see the Morgans aren’t really sure they like each other enough to stick together. Will they use their enforced retreat from worldly distractions to repair their fragile marriage? Will the hit man whose handiwork they witnessed come after them? Does the bear have any scenes on the cutting room floor?

Anyway, on the plus side of the ledger you’ve got Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen, who make a much more interesting and charismatic couple than the Morgans. And the film seems to be careful about not portraying the rubes as complete idiots - they’re actually no more (or less) idiotic than anyone else involved in the movie.