What Do The Critics Say?
"It’s not "When Harry Met Sally" or "Love Actually." What it turns out to be is a lightweight but entertaining comedy deftly performed by some old hands. For those not looking for family films, Oscar contenders, or popcorn movies this season, "Did You Hear About The Morgans?" is one of two romantic comedies offering some moviegoing choice. This is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food and, as such, is most welcome."
Daniel M. Kimmel NEW ENGLAND MOVIES WEEKLY
"The comedy doesn't expend a lot of effort on plausibility: no need. Only the jokes and the relationship matter, and Lawrence is deft with both. The cast is in such fine form that everything seems funny, even goofy little asides like one from Brimley about how his granddaughter will be the next American Idol. As for Grant, who hasn't been this sharp since "Love Actually" six years ago, he is once again the prime minister of cute comedy."
Kyle Smith NEW YORK POST
"Elliott and Steenburgen are the reason for the lone-star status of this movie. It belongs to them, brave souls, for shining in every frame where they appear. Steenburgen is especially appealing as a laid-back sharpshooter with a lovely smile and wisdom aplenty."
Linda Barnard TORONTO STAR
"During the Depression, people flocked to movie theaters for respite from the anxieties of everyday life. "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is reminiscent of films of that era. It's not great art, but it has a certain goofy effervescence, mostly thanks to Hugh Grant. It's not great art, but it has a certain goofy effervescence, mostly thanks to Hugh Grant."
Duane Dudek MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
"Belongs more to the Wheelers than to its title characters. Mr Elliott, 65, is everybody’s senior-cowboy fantasy: the Marlboro man three decades later, still oozing laid-back virility. Ms Steenburgen’s Emma suggests an older, wiser, more grounded Sarah Palin type, comfortable in her skin and her Western gear. A comedy with mostly likable, broadly drawn characters; tart, non-threatening social satire with sharp enough teeth to leave an impression while not breaking the skin; and well-timed, modestly sophisticated repartee."
Stephen Holden NEW YORK TIMES
"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."
Kathleen Murphy MSN MOVIES
"Lawrence clearly has a talent for the genre if he can write a story that includes a murder, not one but two bear attacks and a climax at a rodeo and make the whole thing feel unforced."
Laura Clifford REELING REVIEWS
"By now, Hugh Grant could play this kind of role in his sleep, and sometimes looks like he just rolled out of bed and started reciting his lines. He's good at it, though. Sarah Jessica Parker gives it her all and steals the film as Meryl. Parker is a wonderful comedienne when called to be: her facial expressions and line deliveries are always on-point: but she also holds the emotional weight to effectively play the drama for its reality. It's far more entertaining and astutely written than the majority of recent releases that are."
Dustin Putman DUSTIN PUTMAN'S REVIEWS
The Inside Story
Marc Lawrence is no stranger to writing and directing romantic comedies, most notably "Music and Lyrics" starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore and "Two Weeks Notice" starring Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. But it was while shooting those films that he was developing ideas for "Did You Hear About The Morgans?", a story that would push his boundaries within the genre by covering new ground: marriage. "The idea first popped up ten or eleven years ago," says Lawrence. "It was a project I’d start and then put away, and I’d keep coming back to it. They say 'write what you know', and for me, the problem with that is I don’t know anything. I never leave my apartment. The only thing I know about is marriage: I met my wife in college and I’ve been married a long, long time." But the Morgans is not just any marriage. "It’s a marriage in trouble," Lawrence notes. "These two people have lost their connection specifically because of an infidelity, but the root of the problem is that they had grown apart." It's fair to say that the two hardest things in making a movie are getting the script right and casting it right. For his latest film, Lawrence turned to Golden Globe winner Hugh Grant ("Four Weddings and a Funeral"). "Of course I wrote it for Hugh," says Lawrence ("Miss Congeniality"). "We’d worked together so often that it was natural to mention the idea to him, and he liked the idea. But there was no formal agreement. I write the script and if he likes it he’ll think about doing it, and if he doesn’t he doesn’t." "I think Marc is a real comic genius and will be regarded as such in the years to come. And I think this is his best script, so I couldn’t resist it," says Grant. "There are a lot of romantic comedies but very few of them are actually funny. Marc really does write funny dialogue." For Grant, having the writer as the director is always a selling point on a project, as he believes it makes for a better film. "The fewer authorial voices behind a film the better," the two time London Critics Circle Film Award winning actor says. "What you dread are the ones that are done by a team of writers, and then there’s a hired director, and a hired producer, and then the studio will have their say: and then you’re in hell." Just as important as it was to have Grant play Paul, Lawrence needed to cast a formidable leading lady to play Meryl. Grant describes Meryl’s character as "a force of nature. She’s in a long line of female characters that Marc’s written: they tend to be New York, high-achieving, neurotic, clever, funny, comic women. I think they’re fantasy women for Marc, in a way, and they’re not hard for anyone to fall in love with, least of all, Paul." "At heart, Meryl is an incurable romantic," says Lawrence. “She’s very idealistic about love. She’s outgoing and charming and gregarious. It just became clearer and clearer that S.J, as I call her, would be the absolutely perfect person." Who but Sarah Jessica Parker, star of "Sex and the City" could perfectly embody this chic Manhattanite archetype, both on and off screen? Parker was just as excited for the opportunity to work with Lawrence. "He had such a spotless reputation, and everybody that I could find to talk about him with just loved him. I knew I wanted to work with him and I really liked the idea of the story." The way Lawrence had written Meryl appealed to Parker, as well as how he directed her. "I really liked how funny the character was on paper, and I liked where their relationship started and certainly where it ends up," says the four time Golden Globe winning actress (2000, '01, '02 & '04). "Marc is a great, great director for me. He’s just very insightful about what each actor needs and how to get the best from people and how to make them feel comfortable."
Of course, Parker had other incentives as well. "Most importantly, I had really dreamed, like many other people, women in particular, for a long time about doing a romantic comedy with Hugh Grant." As it would turn out, she and Grant would become quite the complicit co-stars. They had been in a movie together a long time ago. The film, which co-starred Gene Hackman, David Morse and Debra Monk (who also appeared with Parker in "The First Wives Club") was "Extreme Measures". "In my head I think I feel like this is the first time I’ve really worked with Hugh Grant, but we had met years and years ago," the 1999 Lucy Award winner explained. At the time she received the nod for the role, Parker was traveling to London for work. She asked Lawrence, "Should I call Hugh when I’m there?" "This is how it often happens in Hollywood," says Lawrence. "They’ve both read the script, they both like the script, and before they commit, they have the big dinner to make sure neither of them wants to stab the other. So I’m in New York, waiting to hear how it all went." Of course, it went fabulously; so fabulously that during the dinner, Parker and Grant conspired to play a practical joke on Lawrence, playing on the writer-director’s overblown fears. "We agreed that we would each write to Marc back in New York and say it was a disaster," Parker revealed. And how did Lawrence react? "I got these emails from both of them saying how horribly Hugh had behaved. So, of course, I’m horrified. I wrote a letter, apologizing for the dinner, and only later I find out I’m the butt of the joke. At least, they considered it a joke. To be a joke it has to be funny to someone." Grant ("About A Boy") points out that Lawrence wasn’t so quick to come around to the truth. "What was interesting was that after we came clean, Marc still didn’t believe me!" "Hugh was mad at me for having so little faith in him, but frankly, I think my lack of faith is justified," Lawrence joked. "I was so shocked by the whole thing I didn’t know what to believe. I’ve decided never to believe anyone about anything again. Family. Anyone. Never, nothing anymore." To contrast the privileged, neurotic New Yorkers, Lawrence sought out a salt of the earth actor and actress to portray the comfortable, settled couple of Clay and Emma. Lawrence was very excited to have three time Bronze Wrangler Award winner Sam Elliott and Oscar ® winner Mary Steenburgen ("Melvin and Howard") accept the roles. "I’m just happy to have an opportunity to work with Marc Lawrence and on a Marc Lawrence screenplay," says Elliott. "He’s incredibly smart and works his butt off. He’s very specific in what he wants and collaborative at the same time. He’s always looking to make it better. I’ve never worked with a director that works as hard as Marc does." How does Elliott descibe his character? "Clay is representative of a lot of small town America that still remains today. Clay and Emma are very true to a certain kind of western sensibility. They’re independent, they work hard, and they have a set of morals. They’re honest and they have some integrity." Elliott, a veteran of dramatic westerns like "Tombstone" and "The Hi-Lo Country", admits that the film gaves him an opportunity he has not yet had as an actor: "It’s the first out and out comedy I’ve ever done, and it was a blast." "Sam is a great actor, and even though he’s done this type of role before, he was so excited about the idea of doing a comedy: taking that kind of role and putting it in a different environment," says Lawrence. "He’s very detail-oriented and always wanted to talk about the script and the character. He was so determined to get his character right." Mary Steenburgen had similar motivations to sign onto a Lawrence film. "I was a big fan of Marc’s film "Two Weeks Notice" with Sandra Bullock, and I’d just finished working with Sandy on a different movie."
"We talked about Marc Lawrence and how much she loved working with him; so I was kind of predisposed to thinking it was going to be a great project. As soon as I read the script I thought, count me in. It’s such a fun story and the character was fantastic." Steenburgen says her character Emma (who teaches Paul how to chop wood and Meryl how to shoot a gun),"is a really fun character because she’s a tomboy who exists in a man’s world." Lawrence revealed he has "loved Mary from afar, for years, in about ten different movie roles, from the Woody Allen films she did to "Parenthood". The fact that she wanted to do this film was just thrilling. She brings an element to the character that I really hadn’t written into it: a delightful loopiness. Emma is very, very smart and very much onto these New Yorkers, but there’s a slight off-balance quality to her that makes everything she says very, very interesting." Steenburgen ("Philadelphia" & "Step Brothers") felt that working with Elliott ("The Big Lebowski" & "Thank You for Smoking") gave the Western aspect of the film more credibility. "Sam just adds an authenticity because, he looks like a cowboy. He looks like the West. He adds just a substance to the film that probably nobody else could have filled those shoes, or those cowboy boots." The the role of the hitman Vincent, went to Michael Kelly. "Thank God for Michael Kelly. It’s hard to write villains in this kind of comedy," Lawrence notes, "if it’s too dark, the audience won’t buy it anymore, but it needs to have credibility so that the audience believes that the characters are in danger, so the machinery of the plot keeps moving. When you look at Michael, you think, 'Yeah, that guy is capable of killing a bunch of people,' even though in real life, other than being an Atlanta Braves fan, he could not be nicer." For the record, Kelly has been seen in roles on the other side of the law. He appeared in "Changeling" playing Detective Lester Ybarra and in TV's "Kojak" (Detective Bobby Crocker) and "The Sopranos" (Agent Ron Goddard). Perhaps the most nail-biting role to fill for Lawrence was that of young Lucy, granddaughter of Earl Granger (played by 2005 Golden Boot Award winner Wilford Brimley) in the film. That was because he had his own daughter, twelve year old Gracie Bea Lawrence in mind for the role when writing it, and hadn’t even put her on tape before finally casting her. "I just thought she was right for the part," Lawrence offered. "I needed a girl her age who could sing. Actually, it was a fantastic experience having her there: my wife and my youngest son came out to the shoot in Santa Fe with us, but at a certain point during filming, they had to go back, and it was just me and Gracie. She really was adopted by the whole set. It was really an emotional thing for me, a great way to have father and daughter time together in this tiny town in New Mexico. Of course, this is the last time we’ll ever work together. She’s way too big now. She was just on Broadway." Gracie Bea made her Broadway debut at the Nederlander Theatre in Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" on October 25th 2009. According to the people who know him, it seems Marc Lawrence is an unlikely candidate to set a film in Wyoming. According to co-producer Melissa Wells, who has worked with Lawrence for years: "We shot Music and Lyrics within ten blocks of Marc’s apartment. Marc is a New Yorker at heart. He gets the Mets games on his iPhone and he eats a bagel every day." "Marc is a man who doesn’t like to leave the Upper West Side of New York," Grant notes. "For him, Central Park is too much nature, so to really have written this, set out here in the west, involving beasts, is for him a strange form of masochism."
Synopsis
 Highly successful Manhattan couple, Paul and Meryl Morgan , have only one notable failure in their almost perfect lives: their dissolving marriage. Seperated after Paul had a one night stand, they're heading for the divorce court. But the turmoil of their romantic lives is nothing compared to what they are about to experience. After a dinner engagement, the estranged couple witness the murder of one of Meryl's clients and become targets of a contract killer working for an arms dealer the FBI has had under surveillence. The Feds, decide the only way to protect the Morgans, is to place them in witness protection and to whisk them away from their beloved New York to the tiny town of Ray, Wyoming. Now a relationship that was on the rocks threatens to end completely in the Rockies. In their new BlackBerry free lives, can the Morgans slow down and rekindle their lost passion?
The Verdict
"If your're not a fan of honorary César Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Hugh Grant or two time Producers Guild Award winner Sarah Jessica Parker, you'd be wise to give Marc Lawrence's latest film "Did You Hear About the Morgans?", the flick. That's right: give it the flick! You won't like it, period! By doing so, you are sure to retain your friends: because they won't have to listen to you whinging about either Grant or Parker. If you don't fall into the afore mentioned category and romantic comedies are your thing, there's plenty to enjoy here. By now most of us know what we are getting when Hugh Grant is headlining a film cast. There's not much variety in the roles he plays but then, they are usually good roles. Sarah Jessica Parker on the other hand, can play any role. Her impressive list of credits includes: "Smart People", "The Family Stone" "State and Main", "The First Wives Club, "Ed Wood" and of course: "Sex And The City". Director and writer Lawrence improves the mix with the addition of seasoned performers Oscar ® winner Mary Steenburgen and Alan J Pakula Award winner Sam Elliott. Though DYHATM is at times a little predictable, there's still plenty of laughter invoking moments to enjoy, especially after the Morgan's are placed in the witness protection programme and relocated from the hustling, bustling New York City to the tiny town of Ray, Wyoming. Here, away from familiar territory and their high profile lives, the Morgan's really are a 'fish out of water'couple. It won't kill you to spend some time with the Morgan's. "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" is, in the main, good fun. 3 STARS."
Who's Who?
Hugh Grant
Sarah Jessica Parker
Sam Elliott
Mary Steenburgen
Kim Shaw
David Call
Natalia Klimas
Vincenzo Amato
Jesse Liebman
Elisabeth Moss
Michael Kelly
Seth Gilliam
Sándor Tecsy
Kevin Brown
Steven Boyer
Sharon Wilkins
Dana Ivey
Wilford Brimley
Gracie Bea Lawrence
Beth Fowler
Christopher Atwood
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Paul Morgan
Meryl Morgan
Clay Wheeler
Emma Wheeler
Nurse Kelly
Doc D. Simmons
Monique Rabelais
Girard Rabelais
Adam Feller
Jackie Drake
Vincent
U.S. Marshal Lasky
Anton Forenski
U.S. Marshal Henderson
U.S. Marshal Ferber
U.S. Marshal King
Trish Pinger
Earl Granger
Lucy Granger
Ma Simmons
U.S. Marshal
The Production Team
Director
Writer
Producers
Original Music
Cinematography
Film Editor
Casting
Production Designer
Art Direction
Set Decoration
Costume Design
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Marc Lawrence
Marc Lawrence
Liz Glotzer & Martin Shafer
Theodore Shapiro
Florian Ballhaus
Susan E Morse
Ilene Starger
Kevin Thompson
Steve Carter
Susan Bode-Tyson
Christopher Peterson
Run Time 103 minutes
Rated PG [AUST]
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