Film: Morning Glory

In many ways Morning Glory fits into the category of the office rom-com, Rachel McAdams stars as a woman who always puts her career before romance and when she meets a potential ‘the one’ there’s a struggle over which one will win out. However this film places far bigger emphasis on her career than the romantic aspects. McAdams’ character, Becky, is a television producer in her 20’s who has a dream of working on the Today Show. After being fired from her job on a local morning show, Becky gets a job as the main producer for the constantly 4th rated breakfast show Daybreak. While working there she meets ‘Mr Right’ in the form of Patrick Wilson who plays his role adequately enough without doing much to impress. Their romance doesn’t really go anyway over the course of the film and in fact the subplot appears to be almost forgotten by the film’s end.
Most of the film’s plot revolves around Becky trying to make Daybreak more appealing to the public to keep it from getting cancelled while struggling to deal with her colleagues.

The best performances of the film come from the presenters of Daybreak. Diane Keaton is a delight as a attention seeker who doesn’t want to overshadowed. Harrison Ford essentially steals the film as a former news reporter who doesn’t want to do any fluff pieces and ‘the 3rd worst person in the world’. Whereas you’d expect Ford’s character to soften over the course of the film he remains a cold-hearted, horrible person rigidly refusing to get involved on the show. He perfectly balances against the cartoonish cheeriness of Becky making the film feel slightly less vomit worthyingly cutesy and empowering.

Rather disappointedly, the film comes to a fairly predictable conclusion when Becky is offered a job on the Today Show and Ford’s character radically changes to keep her from quitting. All in all the film isn’t that memorable, in fact it’s been a week since I saw it and I’ve forgotten most of the plot. Becky saves the show and it all ends relatively happily is about all I remember. The films got a few good laughs, most of which come from Harrison Ford, but not enough to really make me recommend it to anyone.