CINEMA: Did You Hear About The Morgans?

Some comedy turns manage to go through their whole careers without having to change even one small aspect of their routines, unfortunately this is not the case with Hugh Grant.

He has made a career out of playing the rather nonplussed, mumbling, bumbling Englishman, but it no longer manages to raise a laugh, or even a smile as this lame, clunky ‘comedy’ shows.

Here he’s playing well-off Manhattan lawyer Paul Morgan, separated from his realtor wife Meryl (Sarah Jessica Parker) because of his infidelity. However, when the pair witness one of Meryl’s clients being murdered they are whisked off to the hick town of Ray, Wyoming, to enter the witness protection scheme.

Placed in the home of two US Marshalls (Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen) they bitch, they moan, they meet the locals and slowly begin to bond again, which would be all well and good if you gave a hoot about either of them, but you don’t.

Whereas Hugh’s bumbling used to look charming, it is now rather pathetic coming from a man pushing 50. You wouldn’t trust his character to successfully accomplish a trip to the supermarket, let alone handle multi-million dollar law suits. Meanwhile, Sarah Jessica Parker tries to tackle a role much better suited to Sandra Bullock and fails abysmally.

Although it may be a little unfair to comment on her appearance, she is looking decidedly ropey here, and when she starts to talk about her biological clock ticking you feel like telling her quite frankly she should have been thinking about that a good two decades ago.

However, the final, rusty nail in the coffin is when, having learned from those good old folks down in the country what the really important things are in life, they decide to adopt a baby. Do they adopt a needy American orphan? Hell no, they adopt a Chinese baby, which of course is an option only open to rich, smug Americans.

And that, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with this movie; it’s smug, it’s clunky, and most importantly it’s out of touch with reality and the times. Basically, it is well past its sell by date; just like Grant and Parker.