Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play estranged husband and wife Paul and Meryl Morgan, two successful Manhattanites who witness a murder and are transplanted to a small US town under the witness protection programme. They are housed with the Wheelers (Elliot and Steenburgen), a kind couple who are tolerant of their big city guests. Blackberries and life's luxuries are ditched as the Morgans get down to some outdoors living. Since this is the American Midwest, it involves pulling out a shotgun to shoot at tin cans, fleeing from a wild bear and attending barn dances and rodeos. No, really, Lawrence leaves no country hick stereotype unturned. By the end, the Morgans and Wheelers have both learned something about each other and the titular couple return to their normal lives better people than when we found them. How very, very predictable.
It's difficult to articulate just how abysmal this film is... the premise has potential but Lawrence squanders every element at his disposal. There is not one joke that raises a laugh in this film; the dig at Sarah Palin from the trailer is past its sell-by date and the prospect of Grant running away from an agitated grizzly bear is humorous on paper, but portrayed on screen its sapped of any kind of hilarity. In Lawrence's view of man vs. (CGI) beast, the confrontation is about as exciting as watching paint dry and just as funny.
Grant and Parker may have been able to make something out of this film with a decent script, but alchemy isn't in either of their arsenals and, in all fairness, even Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn couldn't turn this fishes-out-of-water comedy into gold. The affable stars seem uninterested throughout, with Hugh going through the motions and SJP struggling to connect with a character who's even duller than shoe-obsessed Carrie Bradshaw. They don't make a believable couple or have any electricity when they're sharing the screen, so the movie is doomed from the outset.
Opening in cinemas on January 1, it's hard to think of a worse way to spend the New Year than watching this lazy, witless and boring comedy. With Did You Hear About The Morgans?, 2010 has its very first "vomcom". On the plus side, if you do happen to see this movie, you can escape in the knowledge that cinema visits next year can only get better.
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