Movie Review - Bible Based: Morning Glory

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

The Show Must Go On

Plot Overview

business woman handshake Twenty-eight-year-old Becky Fuller (Rachael McAdams) shakes hands with her internet-arranged date Bill (Noah Bean) at a roadside restaurant as school buses zoom by the window in the bright January sunshine. She apologizes for the early meet time saying she's a producer for Good Morning New Jersey that airs at 4:00 a.m. and must arrange her schedule accordingly. He does insurance marketing. She spews an abundance of trivia that he doesn't need to know, then excuses herself from the table to take a call from her boss. Bill calls for the check. This has happened before. She hasn't got a boyfriend.

lovers spud man spud spud spud Her company reorganizes and (reluctantly) lets her go. She finds a position at IBS in New York as executive producer for a small potatoes show called Daybreak. In the elevator she meets heartthrob Adam Bennett (Patrick Wilson) who stops by later to ask her to meet him the next day at Schillers on Madison, a bar where the guys hang out after work. A coworker congratulates her on her date, but she categorizes it as a business meeting between colleagues for the purpose of acquiring contacts. Yet if we use the template from the movie “Say Anything,” in which some recent high school grads defined a date as “prearrangement, with the possibility of love,” this qualifies as a date as much as was hers with Bill (and others.) With Adam they had a loosely defined meeting time, with Bill it was inconvenient, yet both were prearranged. She and Bill had greeted each other heartily, and Adam, “When I saw you at the bar, I practically tackled you to the ground.” They got themselves a table for privacy and started sharing with each other. A blonde cuts in on their intimacies, with apologies, to hit on Adam, hugging him and being kissed on the cheek. There are multiple possibilities in play here. An insecure Becky after a handshake takes off as did Bill once upon a time. Yet she'll stop by Adam's office later to discuss it, the possibility bearing fruit.

Movies teach us stuff about dating, no? Becky admits, “my radar for that kind of thing is bad.” Others around her recognized her going on a date, it being a common social interaction. This is different from the crush one of Becky's colleagues had on Adam back in college. A crush is internal, whatever the person says or thinks it is as opposed to a date that has real world substance. Becky admits, “I bungled it.” Yes, “first dates can be awkward.” Adam suggests they start over, “Let's go out to dinner like regular people.” They end that regular date in the regular way with a kiss, then get carried away and start to disrobe until interrupted by a cell call.

Having sex on a date is most irregular if the man and woman aren't married to each other; there can be multiple complications. Becky's coworkers gift her with condoms. They're to mitigate the possibility of disease or pregnancy. A couple workers at the show hate each other after having slept together. Another got promoted above her linguistic competence after sleeping with someone. The hookers the governor was busted with probably elevated their reputations less by referring to their trysts as dates than were regular dates defamed by the sex. And isn't there the matter of rushing things? Anthropologist Desmond Morris—best known for his book, The Naked Ape—writes of human sexual relations: (247)

The [sexual] preliminaries provide time for careful judgments to be made, judgments that may be hard to form once the massive, shared emotional impact of double orgasm has been experienced. This powerful moment can act as such a tight ‘bonder’ that it may well tie together two people quite unsuited to each other, if they have not spent sufficient time exploring each other's personalities during the sexual preliminaries.

Ideology

The telephone emergency concerned new co-anchor Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) going on a bender and likely being unable to show up for work on his first day. Becky scours the bars until she finds him, and she is steaming mad. One of his cohorts seeing her approach remarks, “They're getting younger all the time.” Mike stands and sarcastically chips in, “Is the baby mine?” But this is not about sex, it's about work. A preacher might look at it from a different angle as in a Shirley Barker novel:

“And I tell ye, when I came to Taranay to hold Kirk Session and take cognizance o' scandals, I found there three contested bastard bairns—a thing unheard of in these isles since the Reformation!”
—

“Come, sir,” protested Rona, drawing his brows together in a frown. “Be ye no accustomed to bastard bairns after forty years o' holding Kirk Session? 'Tis unlucky if the young folk make too free with each other, but no cause for a man to work up an apoplexy.”

“I can see y're no troubled at the thought of wickedness yourself,” retorted the minister. “Ye think less o' religion than o' trade and manufacture. Ah, the love of Mammon be greater than the love o' God nowadays. Little your ships and warehouses will boot ye on the Day o' Judgment!”

“Why, little will anything boot us then, Master Riddoch,” said Margery— (110–11)

That “the young folk make too free with each other” is not the worst transgression encountered in this movie though it still shakes out as one. From Italian Dante's Inferno (106):

Have you forgotten that your Ethics states the three main dispositions of the soul that lead to those offenses Heaven hates— incontinence, malice, and bestiality? and how incontinence offends God least and earns least blame from Justice and Charity?

Elijah The final scene with Adam and Becky has them shot from behind, dressed up, passing through a door for parts unknown. It evokes an image of entering a cave, as spoken by Saint John the Revelator (Rev. 6:15-17) of the rich and powerful seeking cover in the rocks and dens of the mountains from “the great day of his wrath … and who shall be able to stand?”

vegetables For what it's worth, Becky embodies a work-hard-to-succeed story along the lines of, (Prov. 22:29) “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.” Here the word mean means average, akin to the way mathematicians use it. Becky started out with a run-of-the-mill Bill for a date and ended up with a Yalie cream-of-the-crop Adam. She fired a lecherous anchorman Paul McVee (Ty Burrell) and ended up working with a legendary newsman Pomeroy who just needed help with the human interest side of the show—cooking fritattas and beignets, “what the rabble call donuts.” She started her job search grasping at straws and ended up being courted by “The Today Show.” The key to her success was, “I devote myself completely to my job. It's what I do. It's who I am.”

Production Values

“” (2010) was directed by Roger Michell. It was written by Aline Brosh McKenna. It stars Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, and Diane Keaton. Ford did great as did the other leads. The supporting cast also did well. Keaton was funny and her scenes with Ford priceless. Matt Malloy was a riot as Daybreak's weatherman Ernie.

MPAA rated it PG–13 for some sexual content including dialogue, language and brief drug references. The pace is relentless and the humor from all directions. Runtime is 1¾ hours.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

The humor is seated in the milieu portrayed as much as in the zany characters presented. The plot is straightforward if a little bit bonkers. It should be an easy one to watch with a date.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.