Cloudy with showers.By John DeSando, "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Don't be fooled by promotions of Morning Glory that feature combative TV anchors Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) and Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) because that tension is not exploited by either this film, Morning Glory, or the TV show depicted, Daybreak. They face off once on camera, but not again.
Meanwhile Becky (Rachel McAdams) is the new executive producer hired to revitalize Daybreak (it is last place behind such giants as the Today Show). Writer Aline Brosh McKenna has done as she did before in Devil Wears Prada, put a na?ve but ambitious young woman in a high-profile industry, where the outcome after the hard knocks is formulaic. Then, Prada had the estimable Meryl Streep where Morning Glory has Harrison Ford, considerably less talented than she in the acting nuance category. This story has been variously played from Katherine Hepburn's turn in Morning Glory (1933) and Betty Davis's All About Eve (1950), both about the theater, to TV in Holly Hunter's Broadcast News (1987).
As he did in Extraordinary Measures as a grumpy, brilliant, angry scientist, Ford overdoes the grumpy in this film. Do you think he'll eventually thaw? That I even ask that question facetiously s a signal that no director apparently has the temerity to tell this icon that subtlety is better than hyperbole.
Broadcast News has about the same plot, and early Katherine Hepburn such as in Stage Door and Morning Glory puts the same young spitfire through her paces but with much more generous dialogue and not an angry anchor to drag the film into a watery grave. Actually Keaton this time is less manic than she has been in recent films (Mad Money, for example), a signal that an underplaying Ford could have saved the film from mediocrity if he too toned down his anger.
I guess the sweetly ironic Han Solo and Indiana Jones were not available.
John DeSando co-hosts It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee for WCBE 90.5. The shows can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com