DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS?

When you have this kind of poster, and this kind of match-up of tailor-made stars, and this kind of fish out of water premise, you deduce naturally that Did You Hear About the Morgans? is this Christmas’ romantic comedy offering. If you’ve been indoors all-month long and haven’t done your holiday shopping, then perhaps you haven’t seen the poster. To sum it up, Hugh Grant looks befuddled and Sarah Jessica Parker looks inconvenienced.

The Morgans are a separated New York married couple and heading towards divorce. Paul made a mistake, you see, that Meryl cannot forget. Paul wants her back and beckons her to join him for dinner. Afterwards they witness a murder where the hitman negligently sticks his head out on the balcony so he can be seen. Now these two have to enter the Witness Protection Program which will require them to adapt to rural Wyoming lifestyle.

By requirement, the Morgans now go by the surname Fosters which is an inconvenience, for certain, but worse the two of them are not allowed to make phone calls back home or use the internet. These are federal protection rules, or whatever, administered by Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen, who play a U.S. Marshall and a deputy respectively. Elliott and Steenburgen are long-time married, and so they serve as surrogate therapists to the Morgans, err, the Fosters meantime in their stay.

As a performer, Grant has always had a gift for depicting delicate discomfort. He underplays his discomfort here, ever so slightly squirming in the tenseness of his face, and yet redeemably speaks cordially and gratefully to his hosts Elliott and Steenburgen. The stuttering Brit from “Love Actually” and “Music and Lyrics” is still on display here, finding notes of forced politeness among an unwanted setting.

On the other hand, Parker is neurotic with a lack of modulation. This is an actress always high-pitched, and either whiny or flustered. Really, this is not far different from her latter years “Sex and the City” episodes. This strident neuroticism is certainly what the script called for, and it is permissible to say that Parker has a knack for playing these kind of New Yorkers. The kind that have never left their own zip code.

What Marc Lawrence (the writer-director “Music and Lyrics”) has done is adhere to the Fish Out of Water formula but designed characters who instead of outright complaining make efforts to not only make friends with the Marshall and his wife but to behave courteously among the rural folk (They are rude New Yorkers trying not to be so rude.) In private Grant and Parker bicker and banter but when outdoors – here are some of the broad segments – they learn to jog in fresh air, shoot a rifle, ride horseback and run from bears.

Several consecutive episodes got me laughing although there was this nagging sensation that I wasn’t completely satisfied. No it wasn’t the occasional pokey pacing that got me. It was the idea that this is a packaged romantic comedy and the romance part didn’t do it for me. I didn’t care if the two of them resolved their issues or not (although the scene where Grant recites his own original poetry as a riff on his wedding vows was charming). Perhaps Paul and Meryl are convincing New York types, but just not convincing together. Forget the romance, but I’ll endorse this as a halfway decent comedy of two New Yorkers dislocated in horse country.

Grade: C+