In the new talk show comedy “Morning Glory,” a character compares fluffy entertainment segments to tasty donuts and hard news to healthy bran. By that measure, today’s movie offers only empty calories. Though it uses good ingredients — an upmarket Hollywood list including Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford — it’s still an overdunked cruller.
The slightly amusing piece suffers most from comparison to the modern classic it obviously apes, 1987’s still applicable and bitingly funny “Broadcast News.” Like that superior television industry satire, “Morning Glory” deals in the continual dumbing down of today’s media and the difficulty that brilliant career gals have in balancing work and a personal life.
But not only does the broadly comic “Glory” fail to offer “Broadcast’s” insight or authentic depictions of those subjects, it takes questionable positions on them. McAdams’ protagonist, feisty morning show producer Becky Fuller, proudly advocates pandering trivia and falsely cheery anchor banter over important news and its credible delivery. She spends most of the picture trying to get Ford’s curmudgeonly veteran journalist character to lighten up so she can raise the ratings and keep her job.
Furthermore, because she’s such a “nice” girl, or whatever, the up-and-comer makes an insane, sacrificial professional decision late in the picture. It’s a choice no man — or woman, for that matter — living in the real world would ever make.
But this Becky isn’t a credible entity from the start. Would a fired, second-tier producer on a tiny local station ever be hired out of nowhere to run a national network’s centerpiece a.m. program, even a low-rated one? It’s an emblematic misfire in a tonally inconsistent script full of errors of common sense and story continuity.
But screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna isn’t the only one to blame. Seasoned director Roger Michell either allowed or encouraged some annoyingly overdone performances that aren’t even eased by the innate charms of the proven stars.
A “wacky” Diane Keaton (as the show’s fading co-host) and scowling Ford strain so hard to make a humorous impression that it looks like one of them might get an aneurysm or hemorrhoids or something.
More convincingly, Jeff Goldblum plays Becky’s impatient network boss, and an appealing Patrick Wilson offers a calm center as her newsman boyfriend. Meanwhile, McAdams is so perky/perfect you want to smack her more than you want to root for her inevitable, predictable triumph in an attractively packaged but inglorious “Glory.”
