Movie Trailer Snap Judgments: Did You Hear About the Morgans?

I see a lot of movie trailers that look perfectly awful but every once in awhile, a movie trailer comes along that causes physical repulsion.  That’s how I felt when I saw the trailer for Did You Hear About the Morgans?

This looks bad for many of the same reasons that New in Town looked bad: dumb fish-out-of-water comedy involving city-slickers relocated to a non-urban environment where hilarity ensues when they are confronted with less sophisticated yokels.  In this case, our city-slickers are estranged couple Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker and they are transferred to Wyoming or something under the witness relocation program.  SPOILER ALERT:  In Wyoming, they discover new things about one another and find love again.  (I have no idea if that’s what happens.  It just seems like it.  Or alternately, they discover new things about one another, and find mutual respect, while still deciding to go their separate ways.)

First of all, I think it’s really difficult to write a romantic comedy about an estranged or breaking up couple.  Romantic comedies should provide some sense of charming escapism and watching people fight bitterly is just like being at an awkward dinner party.  It’s not fun. Remember how excruciating The Break Up was?

But I honestly think the biggest hurdle here is the casting.  I actually like Hugh Grant.  I love him as Daniel Cleaver.  I love him as the Prime Minister in Love, Actually. I liked Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral.  There was a time when just watching Hugh Grant doing his bumbling, awkward, charming “oh I am so very English!” thing would have been enough to carry a movie.  But he’s been doing it for 15 years.  He’s pushing 50.  I like him, but I can’t watch a movie that hangs on his schtick in 2009.

I also actually like Sarah Jessica Parker.  Sort of.  I thought she was adorable in LA Story and Honeymoon in Vegas.  I even liked Carrie Bradshaw early on, and I think she actually seems like a sweet person in real life.  But, just as with Hugh Grant, I’ve pretty much reached critical mass with her screen persona.  Even when she tries to do something different, it still comes across like a version of Carrie Bradshaw.  (Like that terrible movie she made where she went to her boyfriend’s house for the holidays and Diane Keaton was the mom and Rachel McAdams is the sister everyone is just so needlessly mean to her?  But SJP’s character kind of sucks too?  So, no one is really likable at all?  Yeah, I recall that we were supposed to see this role as a huge departure, but she just appeared to be playing an uptight version of Carrie.)

I feel like this movie – with SJP and Hugh playing to their strengths – might have actually worked ten years ago.  But now, it just seems extremely lazy and tired.

Movie Trailer Snap Judgments: The Time Traveler’s Wife

This one could go either way, folks.

I read this book years ago and liked it very much, although I really remember nothing about it, which is unusual for me.  I started it on a plane from London to Salzburg because my friend Alison loaned it to me (Hi, Alison!) as I had forgotten to bring any reading material and would otherwise face a plane ride attempting to read airplane safety cards in German or annoying my friends who were trying to read.  So, anyway, I started this book and thought it was going to be Judith Krantz-esque, but found it very engrossing.  And then, when I heard they were making a movie about it, I thought it sounded like an interesting idea and when I found out they were casting Eric Bana, I eagerly looked forward to looking at Eric Bana (so broody and handsome!) for 2 hours.

However, the trailer leaves me a little unenthusiastic. The first strike against it is that it features some wailing rock song about “FALLin’ APART!” that sounds like it might be The Fray and already I feel like I am watching an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.”  I don’t think it is The Fray, though, which is almost worse because it is clearly some B-version of The Fray.  Bleh.

The little girl playing the younger version of Rachel McAdams has strawberry-blonde hair and Rachel McAdams has dark brown hair.  Sometimes, our hair darkens when we get younger, but come ON, can we have some hair consistency here, people?  I will forgive this if there is some reference to her character making trips to a colorist, but otherwise, SOME OF US NOTICE THESE THINGS.

The trailer also does not show any particularly interesting incidents that I am sure the book contains.  It’s mostly Rachel voice-overing about “waiting for Henry … for my entire life … ” and gasping and breathily proclaiming, “It’s you!” when he appears.  In fact, both actors seem to be delivering their lines primarily in a low, breathy voice.  Bana sounds like Jack Donaghy from “30 Rock.”

The moment of levity in the trailer is Eric Bana asking Rachel McAdams if she will marry him, while she is lying in a hospital bed or something and she says, “No,” and then pauses and says, “I didn’t mean that,” as Eric breathes a sigh of relief and she giggles hysterically.  I hope there are funnier things in this movie than this scene because that’s … not funny.

And there are weddings and Christmases and a pregnancy and Eric Bana keeps disappearing and Rachel gets weepy and they run to one another in a field and they’re “FALLin’ APART!!!!!!!!!!!!”  I will likely see this movie, and I covet Rachel’s hair and outfits, but the trailer makes this movie look utterly generic, which is unfortunate because the book was interesting.  Even the poster is utterly generic.  Look:

Blah?

Movie Trailer Snap Judgments: New in Town

Every time I see the trailer for this extremely crappy looking movie, I think about blogging about it and the idea just makes me exhausted.  Because while this film appears to be crappy, it looks crappy in such a conventional way that I can’t work up much ire about it.  Also, the movie opens next weekend and the trailer only started popping up on TV recently, and I am at least thankful for that.

Let’s see … Renee Zellwegger, who is actually an Academy Award winner but seems to lose more and more credibility with each passing year, stars as one of those career gals we’ve heard so much about.  She wears fancy high heels and Amanda Woodword power suits, but we know she really means business based on her “Take me seriously” bobbed haircut.  Anyway, her Super Important Job sends her to Minnesota for some reason where she will meet some wacky locals and fall down a lot. 

As her plane is landing in the Great North, Squinty Renee squints out the window and is all aghast: ”What’s that?” and the folksy (of course) woman next to her is like, “It’s snow, dear.”  Ugh.  I don’t know how Renee got through business school if she cannot even make a visual identification of snow.  Sure, some people might have not seen snow before, but I would think that they might have some sort of idea as to what it might look like and where they might expect to see it (i.e. Minnesota in the winter).  I mean, I recently went to Kansas for the first time and while I had never before had laid eyes on the rows and rows of cornfields that they have in the Midwest, I wasn’t like, “What’s that?”  when I saw them because, you know, I have spent my life watching television and reading things and all of this gave me a mental concept at what cornfields in Kansas might look like.  Also, I’m not an idiot.

I digress.  Once she arrives in Minnesota, Renee has many “fish out of water” adventures blah blah blah.  It’s cold; she has trouble driving in the ice (which is difficult, I will give her that), and – shocking! – she becomes charmed by the locals and their small town life.  I know.  Who would have seen it coming?  Her love interest in this movie is played by Harry Connick Jr., an actor I really just cannot stand.  He looks like a Matt Groening cartoon and sucks the life out of everything he is ever in, which granted, are typically projects that don’t have a lot of life to begin with like Hope Floats.  (Doesn’t Hope Floats actually have basically the same plot as this movie?) There’s some sort of bit where they are out in the woods and Renee is in some complicated snowsuit and has to pee and she can’t unzip it or something and Harry, like, lifts her up by the snowsuit and it all just looks very unpleasant. 

The trailer voice-over describes this movie as “a cross between Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama,” which only made me reflect on how much more charming I find Reese Witherspoon than Renee Zellwegger.  Stories like this annoy me because I feel like they usually make both the city people and the small town people look stupid.  The small town people are always, like, condescendingly precious and out-of-touch, not having seen cell phones before or whatever, and yet are much more “pure” and “real” than the city people, who generally only care about work and being mean and are clearly incapable of leading authentic lives.  New in Town looks really unoriginal – even the title is blah – and to add insult to injury, stars Harry Connick Jr. as the male lead.  No, thanks!