Review: Morning Glory

Ford: “Look young lady. I have principles you know. Those principles are very important to me. What are you trying to do? Do away with my principles? I will never give those up. Principles is what I live for. I interviewed lots of people with principles but none had mine.”
Mc Adams: “tee hee”

I can safely say that this is one of the worst movies I have seen for a long time. It was boring, unintelligent, drawn out, predictable and the actors had next to zero chemistry between them.

Rachel McAdams is super cute, of course, but painfully perky and other than being super cute and perky, she doesn’t seem to have much else to offer. The movie itself just doesn’t get going either and remains flat throughout. I actually had to finish this in two sittings because it was soooo boring.

There are many lows in this movie but the worst part is the total embarrassment Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton have become. I mean these are two of Hollywood’s finest in terms of acting skill and knowing their craft; yet their roles have been reduced to that of bickering, nagging harpies. Especially Harrison Ford, who’s always been this sharp, classy and together man, appeared frail, tired, and his hands were trembling. He looked like he really didn’t want to do this and as a result delivered an unbelievable performance. To see this legendary actor be reduced to playing a one dimensional, tired and full of stereotypes sidekick to Rachel McAdams and Patrick Wilson, because they are younger and he is older, was very sad. It was a role unworthy of Harrison Ford.

Ford’s character is a walking cliche. He plays the typical untouchable, revered star (veteran news anchor) whose track record of issues with historic significance covered puts every newscaster and journalist at CNN to shame. He is a man with a stern look and principles. Principles he likes to shove into everyone’s face. He has a disdain for the materialism and consumerism of our times and wants no part in it. In fact, he looks down on everyone, including the network that hired him and stuffed his pocket with lots of money, as having sold out the art of journalism for sponsorship and ratings.Of course he doesnt have a problem lowering those sacred standards and work for daytime tv himself. A fact conveniently glossed over by the writers.

I’m so perky. If you poke me with a needle I will burst

I don’t know what’s happened to Harrison Ford, if it is the script or him or what, but he did a lousy job. He had already done a pretty bad job doing the last installment of Indiana Jones too and i thought he would retire from playing roles he just seems too tired for.

But the problem with this movie is not just Ford’s fizzled out, flat performance, it is the story itself. Ford plays a man who’s covered significant historic events and who is supposed to be a legend in his field and passionate about his work. This passion is supposed to create tension and be a real challenge for Rachel McAdams’ character who not only has a lot to learn from this man she so admires but who, as a producer, also has to worry about ratings and money – the two things Ford hates.

Yet, instead of working from that angle and thoughtfully laying out how Ford and Adams work that out, all we get is a fizzled out, flat performance portraying a silly, old man reminiscing about the past and holding on to that “sixteen-millimeter shrine” of his glory days.

he is so boring, paint watches HIM dry.

Ford was not believable as a deep intellectual who lost his bearings (which is what they like us to think). He was dispassionate and boring and just seemed grumpy and tired. As an actor, his heart wasn’t in this performance and that shone through. At some point he was so excited playing this role I thought he would break down and yawn.

And let’s not even talk about the truly monotonous manner with which he delivers the news. He is simply not able to to pull off being or having been a news anchor with that slow stumble. It just sounded too rehearsed and fake and somehow the producers thought we wouldn’t catch it since it is Harrison Ford and who’d criticize Ford.

The movie went downhill from the moment Ford entered and he and Diane Keaton barked at each other like grumpy old people that have fallen victim to juvenile behavior –  and extended into comatose lengths from there on.

The love story between McAdams and Patrick Wilson was laughable and totally unbelievable. Patrick Wilson appears to just have been a stand-in, a nameless, faceless hunk to fit the plot element as the handsome dream-man she clearly deserves and who, as a result, doesn’t need to be given much of a character other than looking good and being there to move the story along. The specifics of how and why they fall in love are not explored; they have a couple of exchanges and then he becomes the love of her life.

Blah Blah Blah Blah…blah blah blah blah…love of my life, we look so good…blah blah blah

Consequently when she says “you are the first person I thought about wanting to share this with” , it looks ridiculous and insincere, because how could she love him, she hasn’t exchanged more than three sentences with him. After she says that, there is a cut (i.e. we dont get ot see his reaction and what he says) and the next frame opens right in the middle of a conversation between them after she “told him”, where he asks her about her job.

So to recap, this is how the scene went down (not in so many words):

She: “I love you, you are my soul mate. You are the first person I had to tell about this“
He: “Uh-huh. That’s great. So, tell me about your JOB and promotion“.

Suffice it so say, the love story was totally superfluous becasue it just didn’t add anything to the movie other than being an all too familiar plot device. The producers probably figured that in order for the main character to be successful in her career and life,  it is imperative that the obligatory love interest be there too  - else the formula is incomplete.

One of the issues with this movie was that it wasn’t clear what this was trying to be. A love story? No, because that wasnt worked out. Was it supposed to be about TV Shows and the hard world of TV production? No, because that wasn’t worked out either and the TV setting just seemed to be the incidental backdrop. Was it supposed to be about disillusionment in journalism? No, because – as mentioned above – Ford just did not deliver anything worthwhile and thought provoking in that regard but clichees and banalities.

It is, therefore, unclear what they wanted this to be. Drama, rom-com, comedy, comedy-drama, romance, journalism, hard work, working with legends whose glory days are behind them? To me, it seemed a bit like a neurotic mess.

All in all this was a boring, plain movie with flat characters and an unintelligent, predictable script and dialogues. It was also very unworthy of these quality actors to be even doing such run-of-the-mill junk.

Of course, after writing this review, I found that J.J. Abrams produced it so it doesn’t surprise me at all that this has turned out to be such a vacuous, empty and boring star-studded piece of garbage.

Michael Fassbender

On the Cover of Interview Magazine – February 2012.

Michael Fassbender is gifted with the rare quality of possessing rawness and intensity coupled with warmth and a certain kind of ardor. There is a fire in him. He is a master of his craft which I believe is more a function of who he is as a person and human being rather than as a function of a skill learned – which acting can be.

They say a great artist is one who has experienced pain and grief deeply; intimately.  Fassbender is that good; he has a wide range.  He is a chameleon. He could play a tea pot infusing it with so much passion and fervor that at the end of the 90 minutes you’ll end up drawn to the tea pot on some level. He infuses life into his characters and his insanely attractive, deviant personality shines through in all of his roles. A rare combination in Hollywood. Let’s enjoy him and his individualism before he is burned out and becomes just another pretty face in the Hollywood crowd…

Review: Don’t Bother to Knock

Nell (Marilyn Monroe) is not who she seems

(Twentieth Century Fox, 1952)

They say that Monroe, early on in her career, had to struggle hard in order to be accepted as a serious actress instead of just being seen as the dumb blonde with a knock-out rack. The producers in Hollywood never gave her a real chance to be a success doing serious roles, however, and only until The Mistfits, some nine years after this movie, was she once again to illustrate the depth of her acting abilities, albeit at a time where it was probably too late to save her.

In this movie she is doing one of her finest acting at an already very early stage of her career – before her commercially successful and better known pictures such as How to Marry A Millionaire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and of course Some Like it Hot catapulted her into stardom and then legend. One can only imagine what she could have turned into acting-wise had she been allowed to continue on the route we see her partake in this movie.

Unfortunately, Hollywood was merciless in that regard and Marilyn’s success dependett very strongly on the success she could bring at the box office. Marilyn, therefore, realized early on that she had to be able to sell and that people, as well as the studios themselves, preferred her as the voluptuous, ditsy, blonde kitten who exhumes sex appeal rather than as the serious dramatic actress she could be; they had Liz Taylor, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn for that.

This movie is from the small window in Monroe’s career where she was still undamaged by Hollywood’s demands on her and instead was allowed to take on the role of a person with more psychological depth than any of the characters she would play later on in her career (except for The Misfits). Richard Widwmark and Anne Bancroft do a great job as well, but they are easily overshadowed by Monroe’s breathtaking radiance and screen presence. When she enters a scene, all you see is her. Watch All About Eve and you will notice how all the other beautiful and renowned actresses sort of melt into the background when Monroe enters the scene, even though her part is very small.  Among her many love affairs, I think the camera was her biggest one.

I am still surprised that after this role she was still not taken seriously as an actor by her contemporaries even later on and was in fact often mocked by such serious and talented actors as Bette Davis. Today she is mostly remembered for her femininity, vulnerability, immense sex appeal and tragic past. She isn’t remembered as the master of her craft Maybe her beauty and extraordinary femininity were overwhelming for everyone around her, including her female counterparts, and just too powerful to ignore and she could not have ever been anything else in Hollywood but what she was exhuming outwardly.

Here are a couple of screenshots of Monroe in All About Eve. It has been observed that no matter how a scene was lighted, Monroe had the quality of drawing all the light to herself… 

Marilyn Monroe in a promo-shot for All About Eve (1950)

Marilyn Monroe with Anne Baxter (far left), Bette Davis and George Sanders in All About Eve, 1950