Witless protection: Moronic 'Morgans' shoots down all laughs
Take Sandra Bullock's worst romantic comedies, every movie starring Pauly Shore, and every action film directed by Uwe Boll, and they might come close to matching the abject rejection of intelligence and creativity offered by Marc Lawrence's stupefying, three-day-old-fish-out-of-water comedy "Did You Hear About the Morgans?"
The script is abysmal. The acting banal. The direction anemic. The mustaches overpowering. This by-the-numbing-numbers movie has no fun, no joy, no spirit.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you'd have to buy an electron microscope to find anything good enough to faintly praise in this 103-minute piece of anti-entertainment matter.
It stars Sarah Jessica Parker (of "Sex and the City" fame) and Hugh Grant as a couple of big-city folks who wind up in the wide open spaces of a dinky Wyoming town after entering into the Federal Witness Protection Program.
The two hate the place, of course. No Starbucks on every corner. No shoe stores.
She's a vegetarian agnostic stuck in the middle of God-fearing beef country.
He's a wimpy guy so terrified by the prospect of a grizzly attack that he packs a can of anti-bear spray. (Any bets on how many times he'll get sprayed in the face instead?)
Parker and Grant play Meryl and Paul Morgan, successful Manhattanites going through the throes of a separation with the Big D looming on the horizon.
Paul has cheated on Meryl, and now he wants her back, as he explains in a voice-over narration at the start.
When the Morgans see a hitman (Michael Kelly) knock off an international arms dealer right in front of them, the Feds move quickly to get their key witnesses out of town and into Ray, Wyoming, under the protection of Sheriff Clay Wheeler (a sagely and taciturn Sam Elliott) and his deputy wife Emma Wheeler (Mary Steenburgen).
Then, Lawrence's screenplay trundles out every tired cliché of self-obsessed city creatures who slowly convert to "real people" who appreciate the twinkling of stars at night and stop taking each other for granted, even though one them can actually take the other for Grant.
"I think I can hear my cells dividing," Paul says of the relative silence of rural Ray. They hate the fatty foods. (Asked what he wants for dinner, Paul replies, "Just an angiogram!") They hate the dead animal heads on the walls. ("We shot them ourselves," Emma says.)
There isn't actually a single experience that prompts the Morgans to become de-Manhattanized into regular human beings (a comedy concept that ultimately is as condescending as depicting rural folks as redneck bumpkins). But they arrive at their new stage of awareness just in time for the killer, who has been relentlessly hunting them, to show up with a silencer and a very bad aim.
Although Elliott and Steenburgen produce enough sparks to steal their scenes, Parker and Grant are inexplicably chemistry-challenged, mouthing stale dialogue without much conviction or zest.
Even Meryl's tightly wound, text-messaging manic business assistants Jackie and Adam (Elisabeth Moss and Jesse Liebman), designed to be the comic relief, come off stiff and unlikeable.
Perhaps Meryl said it best: "I'm so disappointed!"
<p class="factboxheadblack">"Did You Hear About the Morgans?"</p> <p class="News">1/2 star</p> <p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Sarah Jessica Parker, Hugh Grant, Mary Steenburgen, Sam Elliott</p> <p class="News"><b>Directed by: </b>Marc Lawrence</p> <p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Columbia Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for sexual situations, violence. 103 minutes</p> <object width="300" height="205"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/A0ZPI05Hv08&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/A0ZPI05Hv08&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="300" height="205"></embed></object>