Morning Glory (2010)
Directed by Roger Michell
A young and devoted morning television producer is hired as an executive producer on a long-running morning show at a once-prominent but currently failing station in New York City. Eager to keep the show on air, she recruits a former news journalist and anchor who disapproves of co-hosting a show that does not deal with real news stories.
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What critics compared Morning Glory to
A "Broadcast News"-type saga of life behind the camera on a struggling national morning news show based in Manhattan, "Morning Glory" starts beautifully and, though it doesn't quite go the distance, it certainly has the credentials to do so.
Not that it was striving to be "Broadcast News," but "Morning Glory" comes a lot closer in its sensibility to "That Girl."
This behind-the-scenes story about a failing television station doesn't have the depth of "Network" or "Broadcast News," but it doesn't need to in order to be entertaining, lighthearted and often surprising.
Written by Aline Brosh McKenna (“The Devil Wears Prada,”) and directed by Roger Mitchell (“Notting Hill”), this innocuous, formulaic romantic comedy combines elements of the sit-com “WKRP in Cincinnati” with “Working Girl,” “Broadcast News” and other commentaries on the sad state of television today, presenting a series of contrived obstacles that idealistic Becky must overcome.
“Morning Glory” is basically “Broadcast News” flipped on its head.
In order to fuel its phony, mostly unfunny narrative, " Morning Glory " advertises itself as a sharp comedy -- recycled body parts courtesy of " Broadcast News " -- about the death of hard news in an over-mediated environment that seeks only to amuse the masses to death.
This is inherent in McKenna's script, but it's pulled out quite a bit by Roger Michell's direction; at his best (I am chiefly thinking of the unfairly forgotten The Mother ), Michell's films are entirely free of nonsense and sentiment, even brusque; and he brings that sensibility to bear in Morning Glory by refusing to play up the soft, playful edges of the movie, working with cinematographer Alwin Kuchler to create a look that is bright and slightly harsh, capturing the sets in all their cruddy glory (the Daybreak offices are a marvel of design, by Mark Friedberg: lived-in and worn-out and falling apart, a resolutely unromantic view of the newsroom if ever I've seen one).
The attack of the warm and fuzzies in “Morning Glory” is a bit of a surprise coming from director Roger Michell, who in the smart “Changing Lanes” and excellent “The Mother” previously showed an ease with prickly moral questions.