TMG Scale 4.0
Starring Rachel McAdams, Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton
This film might be okay to pass your time on your next airplane ride from New York to Los Angeles. Then again, it might not. I suggest you skip it. Seriously, not even Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton can save cheap writing and a bad script.
I would call this film an excercise in trying to be too “cute.” It is the word that kept popping into my head in every scene. “Oh, hmm cute.” Trouble is, I can pretty much get the same result going to watch puppies play at the local pet shop and it does not cost me a dime. I also kept wondering why they called the movie Morning Glory when the name of the morning national news show they parodied was called “Daybreak.”
Rachel McAdams, as Becky, is very cute and easy to watch, but that is the best I can say. She gets fired from one national morning news show and ends up at the lowest ranked show in New York called “Daybreak.” It is last in the ratings and has schlocky anchors. She tries to revive it by bringing in an industry icon and curmudgeon named Mike Pomeroy played by Harrison Ford. Pomeroy is pretty much a Ted Koppel sort with a very bad case of hemorrhoids. Matched with Diane Keaton as co-anchor Colleen Peck, they just fight and bicker while the show continues to drop in ratings. Becky fights to keep her job, some side romance and the show on the air. Somehow the show’s ratings are saved by Pomeroy doing a two bit gotcha scene at the Governor’s estate. It makes no sense and we still do not like Mike Pomeroy.
There were a few funny scenes featuring the Daybreak weatherguy, so I did laugh a few times seeing him abused on a acrobatic plane, a roller coaster and skydiving. But such “You Tube” moments are just cheap laughs when you otherwise don’t have a good script or movie. It was also more annoying than cute that Becky Fuller runs constantly for no particular reason. She was kind of exhausting.
This show is no Broadcast News (1987) and McAdams is no Holly Hunter. The show failed as a serious newsroom drama such as Broadcast News. It may have only been intended as a comedy, but it failed that test as well. The movie had two obligatory Macbook promotional scenes so at least Apple got something out of this film. TMG did not.