Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Someone recently asked New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis why contemporary romantic comedies are so terrible. Never one to mince words, the acid-tongued scribe replied: "One, the people making them have no [expletive] taste; two, they're morons; three, they're insulting panderers who think they're making movies for the great unwashed and that's what they want."

Dargis is spot on, of course. And it's certainly true that "Did You Hear About the Morgans?," Marc Lawrence's third foray into the genre with Hugh Grant as insurance ("Two Weeks Notice," "Music and Lyrics"), falls far short of the sexy, sophisticated screwball soufflé we all hanker for. Still, this pleasant trifle doesn't look or feel like the hatefully dumb product usually assembled by morons or panderers. Mostly it's an invitation to spend an easy 108 minutes with some very likable folks (Grant, Sam Elliott, and Mary Steenburgen) as they amble through a laid-back fish-out-of-water comedy. (Sorry, can't quite bring myself to feature Sarah Jessica Parker among the "very likable.")

Meryl and Paul Morgan (Parker and Grant) are estranged, because of hubby's infidelity. That said hubby is heartily and abjectly sorry and would very much like to come home is made abundantly clear in the several sad-puppy phone messages we hear (overvoice) before the film begins. Grant can't be matched for deadpan funny, but here wit fails to blunt the edge of desperation in our hero's voice.

When we actually see Morgan in the flesh, ordering yet another insane gift ("a galaxy named Meryl") to placate his wife, the eternally boyish Grant, his brow furrowed with endearing mischief or puzzlement, seems a tad old, even worn. Middle age has caught up with Peter Pan, though his patter remains endearing if a bit compulsive throughout "Morgans."

Then there's the injured party: Mrs. Morgan's no bouncy ingénue or aggrieved hottie. She's Parker, whose bony, equine physog, here framed by a long, limp pageboy, doesn't exactly project movie-star cutes or glamour. In short, the other half of this romantic comedy couple looks very like a working Manhattanite in her mid-40s, her energy sapped by real disappointment: her inability to have a child, her husband's betrayal. (Such grown-up vibes are a welcome antidote to the cloying girlyness of "Sex and the City.") At a conciliatory dinner with Paul, Meryl comes off less bitter than bruised; there's never any doubt that she gets that Paul's compulsive cracking cute is a hedge against falling apart.

OK, these people aren't exactly fresh-faced-jumping-jack-let's get naked types like, say, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in "The Proposal," a livelier, more formulaic fish-out-of-water comedy. The Morgans have some miles on them; there may even be hints of authentic, as opposed to make-believe, suffering.

It almost feels like "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" means to be low-key and lacking in urgency. By means of its slow, mostly conversational advance, a couple of disillusioned souls stumble their way toward self-understanding and mutual forgiveness. Can this be romantic comedy for people over 50?

After accidentally witnessing a murder, our Manhattanites are whisked off to the backwoods of Wyoming, set up in the witness protection program until the contract killer who's tracking them is caught. Moving into a log cabin with Sheriff Clay Wheeler and his wife (Elliott and Steenburgen), the Morgans (gun-fearing, PETA-loving, BlackBerry-addicted, bear-phobic, etc.) have nothing to do but talk to each other and take wise counsel from the older folks. And, yes, watch Clint Eastwood and John Wayne movies.

Ray, Wyo., doesn't rank high on the reality meter. It's a fantasy of friendliness and quirky community, but the film doesn't commit snark when it comes to resident Republicans and unrepentant smokers, a grocery-store restaurant ("I called ahead to reserve a table near the mayonnaise"), deer heads on every wall or even a gun-loving matriarch. (When Meryl first lays eyes on Emma Wheeler, decked out in jeans and a cowboy hat, toting two new rifles from the Bargain Barn, she shrieks, "It's Sarah Palin!")

Nor does "Morgans" go all salt-of-the-earth silly, by suggesting that what our jaded urban yuppies really need is to move to the heartland to find true happiness. When Meryl goes bananas, wondering if they'll ever get to go to Lincoln Center or Nobu again, or read The New York Times on Central Park's Great Lawn, you get that her world and ways are just as valid and valuable as the Wheelers' Wyoming.

This comedy doesn't milk laughs by taking sociopolitical sides or falling into city vs. country clichés: There's not a mean bone to be found anywhere, in plot, dialogue or character. By the time the contract killer comes back into the story, he's almost irrelevant, a McGuffin. The main event has already been played out.

Elliott and Steenburgen are seasoned charmers, taking the show as it comes, clearly getting a kick out of the "kids." Playing their distinctive voices like music and working their physical grace, they make the Wheelers the mom and dad we all wish we'd had: smart, slow to anger and easy on the blame because they've screwed up in their time. Avoiding any dramatic emphasis or underlining, the movie suggests that while the Morgans are learning how to be husband and wife again, the Wheelers are teaching them how to be parents.

"Did You Hear About the Morgans?" will probably be trashed by clever folk who'll find it hokey and unexciting. Too bad. This one's less a polished movie than a modest vacation in amusing company, time out both from the heavy weather of the season's blockbusters and the ugly truths of 2009's terrible, terrible romantic comedies. Bon voyage.

Kathleen Murphy currently reviews films for Seattle's Queen Anne News and writes essays on film for Steadycam magazine. A frequent speaker on film, Murphy has contributed numerous essays to magazines (Film Comment, the Village Voice, Film West, Newsweek-Japan), books ("Best American Movie Writing of 1998," "Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West") and Web sites (Amazon.com, Cinemania.com, Reel.com). Once upon a time, in another life, she wrote speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel and Diana Ross.