This film had a really good cast, including three "big" A-listers, and I was expecting it to be great. Although it slowed down near the end, for the majority of the movie we are thrust into the fast-paced world of morning news, and it is this hectic atmosphere that makes the movie so enjoyable to watch.
Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams, "Sherlock Holmes") has just been fired from her job at a New Jersey news station, when she thought she was going to be promoted. She takes a job at "Daybreak" in New York City, ranked 4th (out of 4) for NYC morning news programs. The anchors (Diane Keaton, "Mad Money," in the female role) are notoriously hard to work with and everyone expects the show to fail soon. Becky, however, has big dreams for the show, and is determined to make it succeed. She fires the male anchor and immediately hires Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford, "Extraordinary Measures"), a veteran news anchor who is used to doing more serious news stories. Becky tries to balance work with her new relationship with Adam (Patrick Wilson, "The Switch"), who also works in news, but she has never been good at putting relationships first and work second. When her boss tells her that "Daybreak" is going to be canceled unless the ratings improve, she goes on a mission to save the show, and she tries to air more and more creative stories to give their ratings a boost.
The cast in this movie worked really well together. McAdams, Ford, and Keaton are all great in their roles - McAdams as the harried Executive Producer of "Daybreak," Keaton as the diva newscaster who has worked there forever, and Ford as the "serious" newsman who struggles with doing the morning news and only took the job because he needed the money. Jeff Goldblum ("The Switch") also has a nice part as McAdams' boss, who tells her the show is going under, and 50 Cent appears in a cameo as himself. The three veterans (if we can call McAdams a veteran) are the ones who end up stealing the show, though, and it's fun watching them work.
Yes, see this movie. Not only did it tell a good story, but it was hilarious as well (how many times do you get to see Diane Keaton sumo-wrestling?!), especially after McAdams's producer character starts coming up with wacky stories for them to do. The movie clocks in at a decent 100 minutes, and I don't think I checked my watch at all during it because the film was so engaging. Keaton hasn't done a movie since 2008's "Mad Money," too, and it was nice to see her back on the big screen. "Morning Glory" is a film that anyone can enjoy, and I ended up really liking it.
"Morning Glory" will be in theaters on November 10th.
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Liz Parker is a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan. She currently works as an Assistant Medical Editor for a pathology website. Visit her at her movie blog Yes/No Films
