DVD Reviews

Did You Hear About the Morgans – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Mar 17, 2010, 15:58 GMT

The comedy "Did You Hear About The Morgans?" follows a highly successful Manhattan couple, Meryl and Paul Morgan (Sarah Jessica Parker, Hugh Grant), whose almost-perfect lives have only one notable failure - their dissolving marriage. But the turmoil of their romantic lives is nothing compared to what they are about to experience: they witness a murder and become targets of a contract killer. The Feds, protecting their witnesses, whisk away ...more

If ever a film could be the equivalent of a stale bag of chips, it would be ‘Did You Hear about the Morgans?’. It is a junk food pic with an idea long past its expiration date. That is, of course, unless you find city folk intermingling with country folk cutting edge comedy.

It’s basically ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ in reverse. Instead of throwing country folk in the city, let’s throw some wealthy urban dwellers in the country! Cue the Sarah Palin jokes…sigh. All the more disappointing as I actually thought the last team-up between writer-director Marc Lawrence and Hugh Grant, ‘Music & Lyrics’, was better than it had any right to be.

But alas, we’re firmly in bottom of the barrel rom-com territory here hot on the heels of the similarly themed ‘New in Town’ with Renee Zellweger slumming it as a city gal transposed to the country.

For our latest fish-out-of-water story, we find ourselves in NYC for the opening scenes with lawyer Paul Morgan (Grant) desperately trying to win back his successful real estate agent wife Meryl (Sarah Jessica Parker) but managing only to secure a dinner after much pleading.

After the dinner clearly doesn’t bode well for a rekindling romance, their walk home gets a boost of excitement. Someone is murdered on the patio above them and the killer clearly shows his face to the unlucky couple who can identify him in kind. There’s some narrative BS behind the murder, but all we really need to know is that the couple is forced into the witness protection program and shipped out to Wyoming.

Here’s were we meet the two best things about the film: Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen as Clay and Emma Wheeler, the local marshal and his wife who are quite used to putting up federal witnesses.

But not witnesses who relish a good fight regardless of who is listening. At this point, Elliot and Steenburgen just showing up is a sight for sore eyes as Paul and Meryl are one of the more unlikable rom-com couples I have come across.

Things proceed as predictably as you could imagine from here as we have what can only be called as misadventure montages – gun shooting, log-chopping – hardy-har. And if I told you there would be an eighties-style action climax at a rodeo where the assassin has tracked them down and they hunker down in a two-person cow costume (natch), would you be surprised?

Setting aside the reeaaally tired formula for a second, the core problem with the film is that Grant and Parker don’t make a great couple either via actor chemistry or how the roles are written.

I just don’t care whether these two end up together and frankly just wish they would go their separate ways so I don’t have to listen to them whining. I’m not much of a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker in anything and Grant’s normally dependable shtick becomes painfully transparent here.

The film never does approach the absolutely abysmal depths that ‘New in Town’ reaches and it has to be said that the film offers a few sporadic chuckles. After all, a film that stars both Sam Elliot and Wilford Brimley can’t be all bad…but you’ve been warned.

The 2.35:1 AVC encode is typically great and befitting a Hollywood theatrical release with no real problems standing out. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is fine and keeps the attention appropriately on the dialogue.

Special features include a audio commentary with director Marc Lawrence and stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant that’s a fair amount more entertaining than the film with Grant coming across as, y’know, funny, and Parker coming across as, y’know, not annoying. ‘Location, Location, Location’ is a twenty minute featurette that looks at the contrast between filming in NYC and rural New Mexico standing in for Wyoming.

‘Cowboys and Cosmopolitans’ is a quick look at the actors, ‘Park Avenue Meets the Prairie’ spends some time with costume designer Christopher Peterson, ‘Bear of a Scene’ takes a look at the unfunny bear sequence, ‘International Special’ is a longer featurette fluff piece and extras are rounded out with a couple ‘Deleted Scenes’ and some funny ‘Outtakes’.

As unoriginal as you can get, ‘Did You Hear About the Morgans?’ will have to settle for being notable only for the awesomeness of Sam Elliot’s ‘stache which, when I think about it, is not a wholly terrible thing to be notable for. For those expecting something else besides the stache, however, there’s very little to recommend. For die-hard fans of Grant, Parker and Elliot’s stache only.