Did you hear about the Morgans?

A decent romcom with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker. By Peter Bradshaw.

I know, I know. Some movies – most movies – get a bigging up before they are released and this one has had an awful littling down. No one has had a civil word to say on the subject of Did You Hear About the Morgans? The word of mouth, in this case, appears to begin with S. I spoke to some people who had seen this romcom, before settling down to watch it myself, and they had the shocked, glassy-eyed expression of people who have witnessed two buses, full of children from two separate orphanages, involved in a head-on collision. And the littling down process hasn't been helped, particularly, by the film's star, Hugh Grant, who gave a cheerfully detached performance on television with Jonathan Ross, indicating that he wasn't exactly pinning Oscar hopes on it. His pairing with Sarah Jessica Parker doesn't look promising either, given their expressions of cod dismay, or possibly real dismay, on the poster. And yet, and yet … in a silly way, it is entertaining, the mismatch is actually weirdly plausible, and try as I might, I couldn't be grumpy about it.
Grant and Parker play the eponymous Morgans, Paul and Meryl, a super high-flying couple in Manhattan: he's a top lawyer and she's a top estate agent. But they are separated, due to Paul's infidelity, which he now desperately regrets. Walking away from a restaurant after a stilted would-be romantic dinner, which Paul has staged in the hope of a reconciliation, they witness a mob hit in a back alley. As state witnesses, they now have to be relocated to rural Wyoming under an assumed identity – and forced to share quarters as a couple – under the benign protection of local married cops, amiably played by Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen. And so the time-honoured procedure of troubled city slickers learning hometown values gets underway. SJP even learns to milk a cow, like Harrison Ford in Witness.
It's silly and zany and, as so often, Grant gives the impression that he could give slightly less than a monkey's about the whole business. But that never stops him being a very watchable comic actor, and there's a very funny joke about the respective sizes of the cops assigned to the couple's personal protection. There's also an excellent sight gag about a wealthy family in a nearby block silently suspending their breakfast to watch Meryl escaping her assassin by climbing out of her window on to her neighbour's balcony.
Grant also has a very funny mannerism of walking self-consciously along while goofily rolling his shoulders, as if he is miming "walking" in some street theatre play. So what can I say? SJP and Hugh aren't going to be taking home any statuettes for this one: but it's amiable and good natured. There are plenty of ostensible comedies that are neither.

1. Summary
This is a review about the film: Did you hear about the Morgans? The film is about two people: Paul Morgan (Hugh Grant) and Meryl Morgan (Sarah Jessica Parker) who are getting divorced, because of Paul’s infidelity. They’re together when they witness a murder and become targets of a killer. Together they have to go to a village: Wyoming, where they are put in custody by the Wheelers family. They go on a date, where Paul is alienated when he hears that Meryl had an affair while they were separated. After six months they are married and have adopted a Chinese child, so they lived happily ever after. The reviewer thinks that Hugh Grant is a very watchable comic actor. And he thinks that they aren’t taking home any statuettes. I totally agree on this. It’s a nice film, with some really funny scenes. But that’s is it. But I don’t agree on the fact that the reviewer thought Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant are a mismatch, they are both good actors. So I thought they’d made a good match.

2. Why did you choose this text?
A few weeks ago I went to the cinema with friends, we watched the film: “Did you hear about the Morgans?” I really enjoyed watching it, but it isn’t the best film I’ve ever watched. So I was very curious what a reviewer thinks of the film, because it’s his or her job to look in a critical way to a film.

3. Typical examples of style and vocabulary
A review is of course based on an opinion, so the reviewer uses words like: ‘cheerfully’, ‘entertaining’, ‘weirdly’, ‘silly’ and so on. Also the reviewer used a abbreviation I had never heard of before, namely romcom: romantic comedy.

4. Type of text
This is a review, a film review, written by Peter Bradshaw. It’s an evaluation of a publication, in this case of a film. It is published on the website of the Guardian, so many people will read it. This text belongs to mass communication.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/31/did-you-hear-about-the-morgans-review