Morning Glory

Director: Roger Michell
Writer: Aline Brosh McKenna
Starring: Rachel Mcadams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton
Release Date: November 12, 2010
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

The adorable Rachel Mcadams takes on the role of Becky Fuller in a Working Girl-esque movie, directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill. The screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada, Aline Brosh Mckenna provides the done to death script for Morning Glory which also stars Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton and Patrick Wilson. You may have heard this inspiring story before, but let me refresh your memory one more time. Optimistic Becky gets fired from her job as a producer on a Morning show program and begins to impossibly scavenge for a job in the Big Apple. She immediately lands a job as executive producer on Daybreak, a morning show program in New York. She easily gets a beautiful apartment and begins her job making quick decisions on her first day like firing one of the show’s co-hosts. With her positive outlook, Becky plans to revitalize the show by hiring cynical egotistical retired news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Ford) that does not please high-demanding co-host Colleen Peck (Keaton). Becky takes on more and more strenuous workloads while developing an awfully quick relationship with male model look-a-like, Adam Bennett (Wilson), who works in her building. In Morning Glory, the cast is stellar, almost perfect in fact but the director and writer go flat. All four main actors in this film are extremely talented actors who have all been in extraordinary films before and together they almost shine through the overdone story of Morning Glory. It was almost like their powers weren’t strong enough as actors to destroy the defunctness and predictability of the script. As an adolescent myself, I was surprised that I enjoyed Keaton’s and Ford’s performances much more than those of Mcadams’ and Wilson’s. The annoying and clichéd romance/relationship between the two of them and the way their characters were superficially written did not help me enjoy their screen time. As big of a fan that I am of Mcadams I couldn’t enjoy her in the exasperating never-stopping role that she had in this film. Whether it was Michell’s encouragement or her natural acting, Becky Fuller seemed too upbeat and too naïve to be a real person. I see the niceness of having a looked down upon, positive person as the main character of a movie but there was is no possible way a person can remain that unrealistically cheerful after being constantly picked on by her co-workers. Her performance almost resembled that of Amy Adams in Enchanted with a forced realistic undertone. Whatever it was, no one could buy it. Ford as the pessimistic egotistical Mike Pomeroy was uncontrollably hysterical and he and Keaton shared a wonderfully entertaining chemistry between their hateful lively characters. That funny, working relationship was probably my favourite part of the film. Aside from the acting, as mentioned before, the story wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before, especially the fuzzy warm ending which I won’t rudely spoil for you. There were also an oddly high amount of scenes where the scene would start off normal and within seconds, the tension would rise too quickly for the scene with Mcadams always almost crying. This happened so often and every time I felt like I missed something important. Why else would everyone always be so angry and stressed? My enjoyment of this film was not low enough to make it not worth my money or time, but not high enough to give it a strong recommendation. Morning Glory had some cute moments and great performances but it certainly was not anything unique or special.