'Morning Glory' broadcasts a few laughs

Roger Michell's comedy “Morning Glory” could have easily assessed what's happened to America's TV news since James L. Brooks' 1987 masterpiece “Broadcast News” showed us a trio of reporters so busy with their professional lives that their personal ones never intersected.

But “Morning Glory” botches a grand opportunity.

It wanders off into sitcomland where the ending feels phony and false, and all the emotions are CAPITALIZED, underscored and italicized for our benefit.

Every 15 minutes or so, Michell even pipes in an obligatory pop song with lyrics that beat us over the head with how Becky Fuller feels.

She's the new, young, energetic producer of a faltering New York morning TV show called “Daybreak.” The vivacious Rachel McAdams plays Becky with spunk, charm and infectious enthusiasm bordering on some kind of mania, but she never crosses the line into Scaryville.

On her first day, she fires the foot fetishist co-anchor (Ty Burrell), then must locate a replacement to work with “Daybreak” host Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton).

She finds a dinosaur: opinionated, egocentric award-winning newsman Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford).

An old-school journalist (hey, he dines with Morley Safer, Chris Matthews and Bob Schieffer!) Mike despises the infotainment content of morning news shows and will have nothing to do with “Daybreak.”

Until Becky finds a loophole in his contract that will cost him $6 million if he doesn't take the job.

With Mike and Colleen bickering off-camera and a network exec (Jeff Goldblum, comically pitch-perfect on every line) threatening to cancel the show, Becky sets out to save Daybreak by devising stupid stunts involving her Tom Skilling-like weatherman (Matt Malloy) taking roller coaster rides and jumping out of airplanes.

“News is a sacred temple!” Mike spits, as he plays the professional dignity card.

“Morning Glory” is in its element when Mike and Colleen are allowed to go at each other like back-alley street dogs.

Mike's caustic exchanges with Becky are also fun highlights of this movie, scripted by Aline Brosh McKenna, who gave us the much more focused media comedy “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Michell, who previously directed “Notting Hill,” also squeezes great entertainment out of the televised torments suffered by Malloy's weatherman.

Yet, Michell doesn't offer an assessment about whether it's a good or bad thing that our morning news shows are blending gimmick-based entertainment with wolf-pack journalism.

Ford and McAdams share a blistering chemistry, but there's nothing going on between McAdams and Patrick Wilson, who plays her love interest, a woefully underwritten, substanceless TV exec who supplies the obligatory romantic subplot.

By the time McAdams utters the script's most pandering line “‘Daybreak' is family now!” we've seen the great promise of “Morning Glory” succumb to the very same thing that afflicts its fictional TV program.

Go to commercial.

Please.