Susan Granger’s review of “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” (Columbia/Sony)
Sometimes – thankfully, rarely – a movie comes along that is so appallingly awful that you genuinely wonder how it got made. After all, Sarah Jessica Parker has nurtured a hot franchise with “Sex and the City” and Hugh Grant has made enough romantic comedies that he should have smelled this stinker all the way across the Atlantic.
Paul (Grant) and Meryl (Parker) Morgan are a Manhattan couple who have separated. He’s a philandering lawyer who’s repentant; she’s a high-end real estate broker who’s disillusioned. Perpetually busy, they have their respective personal assistants (Elisabeth Moss, Jesse Liebman) schedule a reconciliation dinner at a pricey East Side restaurant. While walking back to their respective domiciles, they inadvertently observe the murder of an international arms dealer and are spotted by the contract killer, Vincent (Michael Kelly), who then targets them.
“Wouldn’t you rather live someplace else than die in New York?” asks a Fed.
“I’m thinking,” Meryl responds, after a Jack Benny-like pause.
When it becomes obvious they don’t have a choice, the Morgans are taken into the Witness Protection Program and relocated to Ray, Wyoming, as Paul and Meryl Foster, where they’re placed under the aegis of folksy U.S. Marshals Clay Wheeler (laconic Sam Elliott) and his wife, Emma (lanky Mary Steenburgen). A staunch vegetarian and member of P.E.T.A., Meryl is appalled by sharp-shooting, ax-wielding Emma’s freezer full of fresh meat, exclaiming, “Oh, my God, it’s Sarah Palin!” And perpetually flustered Paul has a terrifying encounter with an angry grizzly. (Actually, his chemistry with the Bart the Bear is better than with shrill, querulous Ms. Parker, but that’s another matter.)
Writer/director Marc Lawrence (“Two Weeks Notice,” “Music & Lyrics”) fashions un-funny, fish-out-of-water caricatures, relying on city-vs.-country life situations dating back to “Green Acres” and stale red state/blue state jokes. Only a cameo by Wilfred Brimley, as a cantankerous curmudgeon, scores laughs. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” is a bland, charmless, witless 3. Trust me, you don’t want to hear about the Morgans.
