Last night, after some not too wonderful moments being a guild master with a problematic guildie, I decided it was time for a movie, and by extension, a movie review for y'all.
Last night's movie was "Morning Glory" with Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton, Harrison Ford and Patrick Wilson.
Side note: Patrick Wilson is really getting close to the hotties list. He might make it one day, but not yet.
Let's talk about the film. As an IMC major (which is housed within the journalism school), I'm faced with a whole college catalog filled with broadcast classes that I may want to look into. Personally, I want to take a radio class (because I just have one of those voices), but I'm also shoulder to shoulder with some broadcast majors. I never could get into the whole newsroom mentality, so I figured that any film in the same vein as "Broadcast News," "Network," the very classic "All The President's Men" and so forth would help me understand the "inside the newsroom" mentality. On top of all of that, we have Rachel McAdams character having to manage difficult personalities, and being that was my problem earlier in the evening, it was nice to watch how someone else handles situations like that.
Overall, the movie was mildly funny, I did have some laugh out loud moments and it was wonderful to watch a girl with a positive attitude win the day. However, it was problematic and had a very abrupt way of telling the story, like the editor had a field day trying to make the movie feel fast paced when the only thing fast paced was McAdams' characters rambling speech and watching her running around incessantly frazzled.
Harrison Ford played a character that seemed very cardboard codgery. He played a news anchor that was at the end of the line but acted like he was too good to take part in the one thing that could save his career along with the view down his nose that made me feel that the character had an ever-present need to annoy McAdams' character.
Diane Keaton was fun and very backseat to what was going on. It just looked like she was there to have some fun and pick up a paycheck.
Patrick Wilson's character got far too underplayed. He was McAdams' love interest in the film and it just seemed like there was so much to explore in the relationship between the two, but the movie, like McAdams' character, didn't have the time to really show us what a great guy he was. I was disappointed in that because the movie seemed like it was trying to cover too many bases. It took us to places we didn't want to go (bizarre segments) and then the things that really cried to be explored (the McAdams/Wilson romance), weren't.
The film reminded me of one I saw a while back with Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman called "Someone Like You" which focused on a television show producer (played by Judd). However instead of spreading itself too thin, as Morning Glory did in several places, "Someone Like You" stuck to focusing on the romance side instead of the television show environment hence the film worked and it was funny. However "Morning Glory" decided it was going to spend more time in the studio rather than explore the romance. What struck me as odd, and it seemed misplaced, was watching Harrison Ford's character "Pomeroy" taking the time to explain to McAdams' character that being a workaholic leaves you with only one thing, an empty house and points her back to the romantic plot line with Wilson. But all of that really didn't fit with the overall story and it left me kind of apathetic and not really emotionally drawn/attached to what was happening to McAdams' character because I didn't know what part of the story to be focused on.
Then came the ending. It was confusing and really bad. We never get the impression that McAdams and Wilson are going to live happily ever after, we only see them walking together at the end separately, no hand holding or closeness, more like two colleagues discussing things rather than lovers, although we do see her back at his apartment very briefly, but we only see her and his refrigerator, we don't see him. Then there's a shot of McAdams' characters mother, who we only saw for one scene in the film (where she tells her daughter to give up on her dreams, and yes, I threw some popcorn at the screen for that with an explicative or two thrown at the mother for telling her daughter such nonsense), then we only see her for a few brief moments at the end smiling as she puts up a newspaper clipping on her refrigerator that celebrates her daughter's success (which was very unnecessary IMO, she didn't believe in her daughter, therefore to me doesn't deserve consideration, much less her weepy look that said she knew she was wrong), then we see Ford and Keaton (who hated each other the whole film) sneaking back to Ford's office for some implied intimacy. Then finally, the closing scene shows McAdams and Ford walking down a deserted street at sunrise discussing story ideas for the show with Ford shooting down McAdams' story ideas with a "No, no, no," which he spent the entire film telling McAdams anyway.
Overall, "Morning Glory" is one to wait for it to come on cable. I'm sad I rented it, but it did have some laugh out loud moments that allowed me some relief. It wasn't the best film I've seen, but looking at the brief moments where Wilson is present and showing some charm gave it some minor nutritional value.
Oh well, we win some, we lose some. At least I'm keeping my head in the game. I'm an Ad girl. That's my dream and well, if "Morning Glory" did nothing, it reminded me of one thing, to keep after my dreams, no matter what anyone says and I guess in the end, that was the whole point of the story.
So, for the song of the day, I give you a song from the film, Natasha Bedingfield's "Strip Me."
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