Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Two witnesses, but little wit

December 18, 2009|Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

Regarding “Did You Hear About the Morgans?,’’ a new comedy with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker: Yes, I have heard indeed, and the news is terrible. Most bad comedies plod from scene to scene. This one plods from sentence to sentence. Grant and Parker stand around as if they’re waiting for someone to yell, “Cut.’’ He’s in one movie. She’s in another. Neither is any good.

To be fair, they’re playing Paul and Meryl Morgan, a moneyed New York couple on the verge of divorce. One evening, an argument between them is interrupted when one of her real estate clients falls off a balcony with a knife in his back (making him the envy of paying audiences everywhere). They see the killer (Michael Kelly). The killer sees them. Before long, US Marshals have deemed the Morgans star witnesses and hide them away in a protection program that lands them in Wyoming, where the comedy is as sparse as the landscape.

This is the sort of movie where the city folk never miss a chance to condescend to their rural hosts, two married marshals, played by Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen, neither of whom is given much to say. But their exasperation feels apparent, all the same. Who can blame them? Meryl, with her disdain for meat and overcaffeinated amazement at big-box stores, and Paul, with his English accent, are obnoxious. These aren’t personality traits, they’re screenwriting devices. The marshals even have moose heads on their wall and no cable. An amusingly Republican Wilfred Brimley is called upon to draw more blue-state blood.

As the Morgans start to fall back in love with each other, so do their assistants (Elisabeth Moss and Jesse Liebman) back in New York. Meanwhile, the killer gets closer to Wyoming. The screenplay makes this embarrassingly easy. He bugs Meryl’s office, and Meryl sneaks traceable phone calls. This is the kind of movie that seemed to come out every month in the late 1970s and 1980s - screwball thrillers in which a woman (or two) run from a murderer. One of those Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase movies comes to mind - “Foul Play,’’ maybe. By their finales, the Hawn-Chase films tended to run aground, but they were funny and you could tell the people in them were having a good time.

The same can’t be said of “The Morgans,’’ which Marc Lawrence wrote and directed. Everyone looks as if they’d rather be somewhere else. I’ve seen this in Lawrence’s other romantic comedies - several with Sandra Bullock, which he only wrote; and “Music and Lyrics’’ and “Two Weeks,’’ both with Grant.