stevecramer-27727
This is a Parker movie and a female justice warrior too....Hugh Grant was played as a 3rd rate B beta semi-male. Hugh's character and movie is played to help change society idea of male roles on this planet.Grant's character is weak, afraid and useless. Can't shoot, can't cut wood, can't protect himself or the people around him, can't earn a living in this movie (a lawyer they mentioned in pasting). Bad guy shows up he whines and hides and the real 'man' (Parker) goes for the rifle and protects. A Bear show up, he whines, cries and is a complete lose...until Parker shows up and saves him. At the Rodeo he's the bulls ass and again, Parker is the head bull. This women movie shows how far women are ahead of men in all departments of human development...its shocking.
mmorganstern-98529
Unfortunately, the moments were interspersed with so much "we're too cool for school" jingoism against anyone who isn't a New Yorker for my tolerance levels for Hugh Grant's charm.The fact that the first credits revealed that it was filmed in New Mexico instead of Wyoming (both gorgeous states, neither deserving of the constant wise cracks about how "rural" they are) was the final break of the fourth wall for me after so much pointless, predictable rot.I don't genuinely expect a lot from a rom com, although I DO like a bit of actual romance, blended with a few funny lines (and there were... a few...), but I also expect to not be offended every few moments by insults to my intelligence and my belief that love and tolerance really are the most powerful forces in the universe, so this was a major fail.It's hard to believe that so many talented minds produced such an amazing pile of... steaming bear poop.
blanche-2
"Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is a pleasant comedy from 2009 starring Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sam Elliott, and Mary Steenburgen.I had only heard dreadful things about this film. I think to have paid to see it in the movies, it would have been disappointing. Seeing it on DVD, it wasn't bad at all.Parker and Grant are a New York City couple who are separated, mainly due to the fact that Mr. Morgan slept with somebody else while married. However, he wants very badly to get back together; she doesn't. She's concentrating on her very successful real estate company, and she's planning to adopt a child.One night, he comes to see her at a Breast Cancer fundraiser, and as they walk out together, they witness a murder and have to go into the Witness Protection Program in Ray, Wyoming, where they stay at the home of the Wheelers (Steenburgen and Elliott).This film is completely predictable in every way possible. I have to say I found Hugh Grant funny, Steenburgen and Elliott wonderful, and Sarah Jessica Parker was fine. Elizabeth Moss of "Mad Men" has a supporting role as Meryl Morgan's assistant; she looks incredibly glamorous.The scene where Meryl calls Paul outside to look at the stars brought back something that happens every time I'm out of a city - it's astounding how many there are in the sky that we don't get to see. And the end of the film, the scene at the airport -- well, that happened to my brother and my sister-in-law, so I have to say I loved that.Cute comedy, not a disaster by any means. Filmed in New Mexico, there was some lovely scenery.
James Hitchcock
"Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is a "comedy of remarriage", that sub-genre of the romantic comedy which deals with a divorced or estranged couple rediscovering their love for one another. The heyday of such films was in the thirties and forties- in 1940 alone Cary Grant made three films of this type, "My Favourite Wife", "His Girl Friday" and "The Philadelphia Story"- but they have never gone away, "Bird on a Wire" and "Sweet Home Alabama" being examples from recent decades. As will be seen, both of these films have something else in common with "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" The couple in question here are two successful, affluent New Yorkers, Paul Morgan, a lawyer, and his wife Meryl, a real estate broker. (A profession which always seems much more glamorous and prestigious in America than it does in Britain). The two have recently separated due to Paul's infidelity, but he still harbours hopes of a reconciliation, and persuades Meryl to have dinner with him one night. On the way home, however, they are witnesses to the murder of a gangland figure (who also happens to be one of Meryl's clients) and are forced to enter the Witness Protection Programme when they are targeted by a contract killer. ("Bird on a Wire" also dealt with the Witness Protection Programme).Paul and Meryl are given new identities, relocated to the (fictional) small town of Ray, Wyoming and placed temporarily under the protection of local sheriff Clay Wheeler and his deputy Emma, who also happens to be Clay's wife. Much of the humour in the film derives from the contrasts between life in the big city and life in a small Western town, as the Morgans have an encounter with a grizzly bear and try, without much success, to learn how to chop wood, fire a rifle and ride a horse.Like "Sweet Home Alabama", this film takes a romantic-comedy look at America's culture wars, and does so from a relatively conservative viewpoint, something of a rarity in predominantly liberal Hollywood. "Sweet Home Alabama" satirises big city liberalism in the person of a snobbish and hypocritical New York mayor who panders to, but secretly despises, the working-class voters who keep her in power. "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is less concerned to satirise city ways than to paint a positive picture of small-town life, again something of a rarity in Hollywood, which frequently makes small-town America the butt of some mordant, and often unfair, satire.Paul is relatively laid-back about politics; indeed, like most characters played by Hugh Grant he is fairly laid-back about everything. Meryl, however, finds herself at odds with most of the local people. She is an agnostic, a vegetarian, a supporter of gun control and a Democrat. (Was she, I wonder, named after Meryl Streep, one of Hollywood's most noted liberals?) They, by contrast, are God-fearing, carnivorous, gun-owning, patriotic and overwhelmingly Republican. (We learn that there are only fourteen Democrats in the entire town- or rather thirteen, one having just died). Yet despite these seemingly fundamental differences in outlook, Paul and Meryl quickly become friends with her new neighbours- and at the end of the day it is those neighbours and their guns which save them when the assassin comes looking for them.This was the third film directed by Marc Lawrence; the other two were "Two Weeks Notice" and "Music and Lyrics", both of which were also romantic comedies starring Grant. It gathered some unenthusiastic reviews from the critics and seems to be unpopular on this site, where it current rating is only 4.5. In my view, however, it is reasonably enjoyable rom-com, far more so than "Two Weeks Notice", which I disliked. (I have never seen "Music and Lyrics").Sarah Jessica Parker has never been my favourite actress, possibly because I generally associate her with that tedious sitcom "Sex and the City", but at least she makes a more lively and interesting heroine than did the terminally dull Sandra Bullock in "Two Weeks Notice", and Grant seems to have recaptured his normal easygoing charm which had clearly deserted him in the earlier film. The best acting comes from Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen as Clay and Emma, the solid and decent small-town couple who show that they are far from being the slow-minded hayseeds which Paul and Meryl initially take them for. The film's political and social themes are not dealt with in any great depth, but they do help to make this film rather more interesting than a lot of recent rom-coms. 6/10
