Early Morning Broadcast News

I find this poster so cute.

"Morning Glory" has a welcome spring in its step, supplied visually by director Roger Michell ("Notting Hill"), lending the antics a wonderfully crisp appearance with careful composition that adds a certain whimsical feel. "Morning Glory" is part comedy, part romance, and sprinkled with some biting satire on the morning news biz. It's a tricky tone to sustain and it's amazing how well the director spins the plates for the first two acts of the film, bringing the audience into the situations.

Selling the humor with tremendous comedic timing is McAdams, who gives an atypically impassioned performance as the center of the producing storm. Registering fear, compassion, and Blackberry-engrossed distraction, the actress makes for believable television wrangler, using her diminutive size to reinforce the impossible task ahead. McAdams also makes an unlikely sparring partner with Ford, who turns his bewildering growl into a refined comedic instrument, portraying a pigheaded newsman facing a dire future of cooking segments and celebrity interviews, counting on booze and his acidic put downs to keep him going. Ford is exquisite at creating a battle of wills chemistry with McAdams and Keaton, who's mostly pushed into the background.

When "Morning Glory" catches a wave of satire and farce, it's an engrossing, amusing feature. The romantic subplot between McAdams' Becky and the vanilla Patrick Wilson bears little fruit and stops the movie dead in its tracks. More convincing are the young producer's battles with Ford, working a subplot that slowly reveals a vulnerability to the veteran, tenderly paying off their bickering relationship. The film's ending is a contrived movie convention and if the filmmakers taken a different approach to the same conclusion the movie would have been even better.