Hugh Grant Co-Starring with Sarah Jessica Parker in Another Romantic Comedy
- Hugh Grant is about to come out with his eighth romantic comedy of the 2000s. "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" reunites the dean of British rom-coms with his co-star Sarah Jessica Parker in a film that takes a big-city married couple on the outs and transplants them to middle-of-nowhere Wyoming after they are forced to enter a witness-protection program.
MTV com quoted Hugh Grant as saying, "...a bad romantic comedy is a terrible thing. There are two things you need to make a good one. One, is it's got to be properly funny, the writer has to actually have talent. The other thing is the romantic element has to be real and not phony. Often these things are cooked up in a Hollywood oven and it doesn't work unless the person who wrote it actually means it."
The actor recalls working with Sarah Jessica Parker in "Extreme Measures," "I liked her in "Extreme Measures," but I really love her now. We bonded incredibly well on this film, mainly because we're both so nervous, especially at the beginning. We were united in fear. I find her funny and eccentric. She has strange appetites. I've never seen anyone eat like that. You can put anything in front of her and it's gone in four seconds. She's half-woman, half-locust. And she's tiny. It's freakish," MTV com reports .
News agencies also report, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play the Morgans, a Manhattan power couple on the outs and the brink of divorce. He cheated on her, citing reasons of infertility-related stress; she is not in the forgiving vein and has already begun thinking about adoption on her own. He wants her back, and proposes a trial reconciliation dinner -- after which they witness a murder, which makes them targets themselves.
So, it's off to FishOutOfWaterville. Plonk, they're plonked into the federal witness protection program and these liberal blue-state weenies are mixing it up with the red-state, red-meat, red-blooded folk of Ray, Wyo. Grant's character is confronted by a grizzly and by a rodeo; Parker's character learns she's a dead-eye with a rifle. (Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen, dignity intact, portray their temporary hosts.) At one point the Morgans share a bull costume, otherwise known as writer-director Marc Lawrence's script, Chicago Tribune reports.
It was also reported, u nfortunately there are no good lines for the troubled couple. Grant's whole awkward, apologetic shtick that was charming back in the day is as difficult to write as it is for Grant to pull off, and neither writer nor actor comes close here. Parker is kept in a perpetual state of wistfulness and disappointment so cloying that you start feeling truly sorry for her spouse.
In the meantime, we are treated to some of the most shameless denigration of small-town American life to be found as the Morgans suffer a simple life where no cable makes for good neighbors. There is all the predictable rural stuff -- a scary bear encounter, a bingo game (guess who wins), a lot of stars in the sky (who knew?) and more deer heads on a living room wall than you can count -- as the story's view of the heartland drifts from sentimental to mawkish.
For what finally happens to the Morgans, if you're curious, you'll have to go see for yourself. Just keep in mind that curiosity killed the cat -- even the folks in Ray know that, The Los Angeles Times reports.
