Oops.

Somehow I forgot to post the link to the review of the utterly forgettable movie "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" It originally appeared at www.boomerlifemagazine.com:

Sometimes, a terrible title is just that. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest of the movie is just as bad.

And sometimes it does.

“Did You Hear About the Morgans?” is a terrible title, simply awful. Cataclysmic. And while this fish-out-of-water romantic comedy isn’t quite as satanically catastrophic as its title (how could it be?), it still is pretty darned dreadful.

All the elements are in place for a satisfying, lighthearted romp. But the jokes need to be funnier and the direction needs to be peppier. The formula is willing, but the script is weak.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant star as married-but-separated New Yorkers who witness a murder. They are put in the Witness Protection Plan until the hired killer can be caught, and they find themselves in what seems to them to be a foreign country — a small town in Wyoming.

Think of the possibilities this premise presents. Writer-director Marc Lawrence did, and the best he could come up with were the most obvious, timeworn clichés — cow-milking, barn dances, giant breakfasts, a rodeo and a grizzly bear. There will be some who will say the bear provides the best acting in the movie, but don’t listen to them. He looks trained.

Parker is equally unconvincing as the neurotic, compulsively talky vegetarian, while Grant half-heartedly plays yet another version of his charmingly stammering standard character. While in Wyoming, they are looked after by a typically laconic Sam Elliott as the sheriff and Mary Steenburgen as his rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ wife.

“It’s Sarah Palin,” says Parker of the wife, proving that there really are a handful of decent jokes to be found in this film, if you look hard enough. Meanwhile, we watch the four main actors with fascination — which of them, we wonder, has had the most face work?

Lawrence has previously scored with such hits as “Music and Lyrics” (which he wrote and directed) and “Miss Congeniality” (which he wrote). But with “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” he flails about like the fish out of water he so desperately wants his characters to be. Some of the jokes could apply for AARP, such as Steenburgen’s assertion that PETA stands for “People Eating Tasty Animals.” Or when Parker is asked whether she would rather live somewhere else or die in New York, she pauses and, when prompted to reply, says, “I’m thinking.”

That one goes all the way back to Jack Benny, bless him. And his timing was better.

If the title is indicative of the lack of coherent thought that went into making this picture, the soundtrack only proves it. Time and again, Lawrence resorts to the most hackneyed, obvious song choices to underscore his already obvious point. When his New Yorkers first go into the country, he plays a little Hank Williams. When he wants to show irony over a weekend night of bingo, he plays “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers. Really, the Bay City Rollers.

A far better movie could have been made from this material, but Lawrence and company were not up to the challenge. If you are ever asked “Did you hear about the Morgans?” the best answer is “no.”

-- Dan Neman, former movie critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reviews movies every week here at www.BoomerLifeMagazine.com. He writes each week for Boomer Fridays, available here, on the making of a classic movie that has special appeal for baby boomers. He also writes the “Silver Screen with Dan Neman” column in each issue of Boomer Life magazine.