Film Review: Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009)
There is a peculiar sub-genre of film, particularly fashionable during the 1980s and enjoyed something of a renaissance two decades later, in which wealthy, spoilt, and staggeringly arrogant metropolitan types find themselves stranded in rural backwaters. Convinced of their own superiority, these urban protagonists proceed to treat the local populace, culture, flora and fauna with utter contempt—only to bring calamity upon themselves through their own staggering stupidity. Despite well-meaning warnings from locals, they blunder into mortal danger, eventually forced to abandon their precious prejudices regarding physical labour, violence, and the indignity of dirtying one's hands in order to save their own skins.
One might reasonably expect such material to form the basis of a rather splendid slasher horror. Alas, in the hands of writer-director Marc Lawrence, this promising premise has been transformed into a romantic comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans?—a genre shift that proves nothing short of catastrophic.
The film centres upon Paul Morgan (Hugh Grant), a successful New York attorney, and his wife Meryl (Sarah Jessica Parker), an equally accomplished estate agent. Their marriage is on the rocks and heading for divorce when, through a twist of fate, they witness a gangland execution. Enter the FBI, who—ostensibly for their own protection—relocate the bickering couple to a remote Wyoming town under assumed identities, where they must await the trial whilst contending not only with the absence of modern civilisation's comforts but, more dreadfully, with one another.
When Lawrence wrote the screenplay, he appears to have been entirely oblivious to its horror potential. Instead, he seems to have attempted to transpose the fish-out-of-water comedy through the lens of Northern Exposure—yet without that series' wit, charm, or narrative sophistication. What remains is a script so utterly devoid of humour that Lawrence's purportedly droll one-liners fail to raise so much as a titter from the audience.
The casting does the material no favours whatsoever. Grant, looking visibly exhausted and well past his romantic leading-man prime, sleepwalks through the role with the air of a man who has lost his thespian will to live. Still, his performance is positively luminous when set against Parker's turn as Meryl. So thoroughly unsympathetic is her characterisation that one finds oneself increasingly inclined to root for the mafia assassin on their trail—much in the same manner that audiences once cheered on Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise.
Tragically, Lawrence—like so many of his Hollywood contemporaries—finds himself utterly unable to break free from genre convention. What ought to have been a horror film by definition becomes, through his misdirection, a horror of an entirely different sort: a torturous viewing experience that stretches across 103 interminable minutes.
Rating: 2/10
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