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Morning Glory is a rare type of adult comedy – the kind that’s not overly foul, and not overly sexual. Typically as a culture, we think of adult comedies as filled with sex and obscenities, and while this film has some of these, it is tame enough to maintain a PG-13 rating. |
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With an all-start cast featuring Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, Wedding Crashers), Diane Keaton (Father of the Bride, The Godfather), Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones, Star Wars), and Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, Independence Day), this film follows the story of Becky Fuller as she works as a morning television news producer. She lands a job at the 4th rated morning news network, and gets pitted against the likes of "The Today Show" and "Good Morning America". Her anchors hate each other, the weather guy is over the top, and the fashion reporter continually uses words that don't exist. Her job is to make their morning show, called "Daybreak," good. This would be a daunting task for anyone – let alone for a 28-year-old who has never been in charge of a news production.
As the story continues Becky learns that her show faces potential cancellation, and that if she is unable to unite the staff, they will all be out of work. She slowly earns the respect of each person on staff and the show begins to turn around, as cancellation still looms overhead. At the same time, she meets a man who works for the same network, and begins to develop the first serious relationship of her life.
What works best in this movie is how it embraces the somewhat silly tone that morning news can take. Morning news is rarely news, and frequently showcases entertainment, celebrities, and cooking. This style of news leads to most of the humor in the film, as Mike Pomerary (Ford) refuses to say the word "fluffy" on air, and as Colleen Peck (Keaton) sings and dances with rapper 50 Cent.
Overall Becky's romantic relationship is fairly superfluous to the story, and is under developed. It seems like in a post-production meeting there was talk of cutting it all together, but they comprised on the relationship having a smaller role in the film. I don’t think it added anything to the story, and I would have rather those minutes of film were spent on further developing the news room relationships.
Romance aside, this movie is a humorous light-hearted look behind the scenes of television production. It was a fun two hours, but not necessarily something to rush out for. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. |
