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The Agony and the Ecstasy of "Morning Glory"

OK, by now you all ought to know that I'm "big" on Harrison Ford. I love the man, and his recent poor film choices can never wash away the positive memories of his work in the past. I can honestly say that I never flat-out hated a Harrison Ford movie until the absolute abortion that was 2009's Crossing Over. Now, that being said, I also am cognizant of the fact that the man's output since the turn of the century (and probably a couple of years before) has been spotty.

I'm actually quite fond of What Lies Beneath and K-19: The Widowmaker. Hollywood Homicide is something that just reeks of having read better than it was executed. Six Days, Seven Nights and Firewall are star vehicles that just didn't gell, and I haven't seen Extraordinary Measures, in fact, I'm terrified to see it.

Then there's Random Hearts, and, in a way, I can equate that movie with the new release, Morning Glory.

Now, there's nothing really about these films in tone, genre or style that would equate them, but what they do have is a pretty damn strong Harrison Ford performance swamped in a pretty weak script. Now, of the two, Morning Glory fares far better, as the unrelenting obsession of Ford's Dutch Van Der Broeck in Random Hearts pretty much upsets the entire film.

Not to get into it too far, but the will they/won't they at the center of Random Hearts doesn't matter at all when Ford's character is clearly unhinged by losing his wife, and finding out she was cheating , in one fell swoop. It's a committed, logical choice that fits the character (and may also be true to the book, I don't know), but it steps across a line. We don't like Dutch, and there's no character to pull us back into the story, because Kristin Thomas is a total cold fish. It's, at the core, as brave a performance as Allie Fox in The Mosquito Coast, but there we had River Phoenix's Charlie to cling to. 

So, how is Morning Glory similar? Well, Ford gives a really strong performance (don't worry, I will get to the rest of the cast), in a script that almost completely lets him down. It's also a performance where Ford seems absolutely unconcerned with trying to make the audience like the character. He's called "the third worst person in the world" at one point, and I think Ford took that as the keynote line.

Yeah, Ford's Mike Pomeroy is a pretty huge bastard for almost every last second of the running time. This performance makes me feel that Ford is absolutely aware of his current reputation as a "grumpy old man" on film, and ready to use that. He, frankly uses it to perfection here. I'd have to say that every, single laugh-out-loud moment in this movie comes from Ford. (I may be short-changing Jeff Goldblum's weird almost-cameo, but whatever.) He clearly understands comedy and timing, and the jabs he takes at, well, pretty much everyone in the cast, hit the target. (Personal favorite; "Senor Shithead" - which I may start using) I had gobs of fun watching Ford work this character, and this material.

I do find it interesting that some people are looking at this performance as "more of the same," but I think it's intentionally more of the same. Clearly, your mileage may vary. I just know he made me laugh.

The rest of the film, alas, gets kind of ground up and spit out. Rachel McAdams is a lovely, and appealing screen presence. She carries the film, and displays a ton of "oh she's so cute!" awkward goofiness. However, her performance did spark an interesting conversation in the car on the way home, in regards to female leads in romantic comedies/"chick flicks." The scripts always go out of their way to let us know that these are competent, hard working women, yet the performances seem to go overboard in making them into goony-bird spazmatics. It's almost like the idea is "make them competent, but not TOO competent, because then the girls in the audience might start to feel inferior."

I mean, really...It seems like, ever since the Brigit Jones craze, female leads have become more and more ridiculous. Annie Hall was odd and quirky, but we didn't need to see her drop a paint bucket on her head, or forget to put on her skirt when running out of the apartment (as CByrd said: who does that?), in order to relate to her. It's kinda condescending, in my humble opinion.

I mean, look at a truly excellent romantic comedy, Love, Actually. the female characters are very funny, and very real. We don't need to see them doing pratfalls and getting tongue-tied at even the thought of interest from a man. One of the large missteps in Morning Glory, and many other recent films like it, is that the filmmakers want us to believe that our heroine is growing in power and stature, but the stupid bits she has to perform undermine that growth.

It's also extremely sad to see Annie Hall herself, Diane Keaton, so ill-served by this script. She does get some extremely nice moments of one-upmanship with Ford. The battle for who will tell the audience good-bye, for example, is really quite classic, and executed with restraint and skill. Outside of that, however, the character is simply a cipher, there's not enough screen time to make her into a "real person."

Now, I do realize I've been rather harsh in my comments here, but, honestly, I've seen much, much worse films in this genre. The cast is appealing, even when underused, and it's a pleasant enough film to watch. What gets to me is that I feel like there was a really good movie under all the "standard romantic comedy playbook" stuff that overwhelms the film. Hell, the romance, with Patrick Wilson, is utterly forgettable. The core relationship is between McAdams and Ford, and they never even hint at a May-December romance, thankfully. It's full-out father/daughter stuff, with cryptic lines that hint that there was a lot more father material involved before editing.

If this is your kind of movie, you'll want to see it, and you'll likely enjoy it. If you're a Harrison Ford fan, you'll want to see it, because he pretty much hits a comedic bulls-eye. It's not surprising to me that it has a pretty paltry opening weekend, because there's just not much distinctive here. You've seen it before, and it serves as what it's supposed to be, cinematic comfort food.

In that respect, it does it's job.

"The Mosquito Coast" in Film and Print

I'm probably going to roll full bore into spoiler territory here, but the film's been out since 1986, and the book was published in 1982.

I'm a huge fan of Peter Weir's The Mosquito Coast. It's an amazing movie, featuring Harrison Ford in what is, hands down the greatest performance he ever gave on film. His Allie Fox was a creation of anger and brilliance all rolled into a big ball of impending tragedy.

It's the story of an inventor, Allie Fox, who, embittered by the consumer "cesspool" America has become, movies his family to the jungles of Central America. Here he buys a town "Jeronimo," and, though force of will and his own scientific knowledge, carves a seemingly perfect outpost in the jungle. He even builds a giant ice maker in the jungle, with the idea of amazing the natives with this bit of civilization.

It all goes downhill from there.

The movie is truly exquisite. Ford is brilliant, River Phoenix is brilliant as the eldest boy, Charlie, and Helen Mirren is perfect as Allie's wife, called only "Mother." The Script, by Paul Schrader, is excellently constructed, and Peter Weir puts it all on screen with the staggeringly beautiful images he's known for.

As a young man, I was 15 when the movie was released, I was utterly starstruck by Harrison Ford. to this day, I look at his run during the 80's as the model of, not only how to be a movie star, but how to be an actor. He inhabited roles simply, building character out of physicality and the needs of the story. You rarely saw him take "award moments." It was acting as craft, hard work, and simplicity. I still aim for that when i get to walk on a stage.

Allie Fox was a meaty, chewy, showboaty kind of role, the kind of thing Jack Nicholson would chewed the hell out of in the 70's, but Ford didn't attack it that way. He just became Fox. Actually, many people felt like it was the role he was born to play, and performance closest to hims self. Rumor is, friends referred to The Mosquito Coast as The Harrison Ford Story.

Even as a kid, I was dazzled by this film. Frankly, it's not what I would've gravitated toward. I was into bit event pictures (In truth, I still am), but there was something in Allie Fox that was magnetic to me. There are scenes in this film that remind me so much of my father. There's a scene involving a lecture begun, then drown out by a chainsaw, that is so much my father I can't hardly stand it.

I pointed it out to my dad when I was a kid, and it's only now, years later that I wonder what he must've thought, having me compare him to a character that basically tortures, and nearly destroys, his family. My father-son issues are near-legendary, but, that little Freudian connection was completely lost on me then. I just thought it was funny, and reminded me of trying to work with my dad.

So, yeah...I love this movie. As a MAJOR Harrison Ford fan, I consider it the best acting you will ever see him do. The two closest performances would be in Witness, and Presumed Innocent. He should've won Best actor that year, but it went to Paul Newman for The Color of Money. I guess if you have to be denied by someone....

However, in all the time I've been a fan of this film, I had never cracked the novel it was based on, by Paul Theroux. I finally found myself think I ought to rectify that a couple of weeks ago, and picked up a copy.

The first thing to say is, if you're familiar with the film, there are relatively few surprises in the book. Schrader's adaptation is extremely faithful to Theroux's novel. Right down to lines of dialogue. I have to admit, I was surprised at this. There are some changes in details, and a journey upriver with a huge block of ice that is omitted from the movie. The book also goes slightly further after the film ends the story. Allie's ultimate fate is much slower, and far more painful than what Schrader and Weir gave us.

I was also very amused that the Harrison Ford "FINGER OF DOOM" is a huge thing in the book, long before Ford would ever be cast. Allie is always poking and wagging his finger at people. This amused me no end.

I have to say Theroux is a fantastic writer, and his prose is tight and to the point, while still able to convey the multiple levels of meaning that pervade this story. Allie's descent is physical, mental and spiritual, all while he's elevating himself toward Godhood. It's all deep, meaningful stuff, but Theroux keeps himself centered on the story, not the subtext.

One great help in this is the use of Charile as the narrator, which is also the case in the film. Charlie is just a kid, and a confused, scared one, at that. As things go wrong for the Fox family (in addition to Charlie, there's a younger brother, and two twin girls), Charlie only sees this as part of his world. A world that's naturally smaller for children, but also is aggressively limited by his father. Theroux does a fine job of setting this as a memory, without having the adult overwhelm the child's viewpoint.

I've done a lot of work with Shane by Jack Schaefer, and my thoughts tended to compare and contrast the two books. Schaefer's novel is much shorter, and simpler, working as a western morality play. Yet, both works trade heavily on the father/son dynamic. As Bob learns of the nobility of his father in Shane, Charlie suffers through the long fall of his father from a position of perfection he holds in the early chapters. Allie Fox never fails to tell everyone he is always right, all while events move to prove him wrong time and time again. Shane's Bob Starrett is exactly the opposite.

The other thought I had was far more current events-related. This is a powerful engrossing story about how placing oneself as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong will ultimately lead to downfall. As I look around at the political arguments around me, all I see are lines of Allie Foxes. Ideologues intent on proving that that are the absolute moral authority, and prepared to bully and shout down anyone who disagrees. You admire this in Allie at first, when he runs a sniveling missionary out of his settlement at Jeronimo, but, as his certainty devolves into megalomania, you realize the destructiveness, the ignorance of such a stance.


If you are a fan of the film, I do heartily recommend the novel. Heck, I just recommend it in general.

I like this quote...

"I’m not an actor who will sit there and say “My character wouldn’t do that.” “Okay, we’ll get somebody else.” My character does whatever helps tell the story, and if I can’t make it real, then I’ll figure out why I can’t make it real. But usually there’s a way to figure out how to make it real."
-Harrison Ford

I have such trouble with Harrison right now, but I want to believe. This quote stuck out to me, because it sounded like the Ford of the old days, the craftsman who just made things work, without muss or fuss. He came and played the role professionally and with a minimum of actor-bullshit.

Sometimes I have such problems with what I do. I see people make it so much harder than it needs to be. Who put up walls between themselves and the performance...in essence, they make it harder on themselves.