Blu-Ray Review: Absolutely Awful ‘Did You Hear About the Morgans?’

Printer-friendly versionE-mail page to friendPDF version

CHICAGO – The title of “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” was almost too easy for critics considering how horrendous this alleged comedy ended up. Yeah, we heard it sucked and the new DVD and Blu-ray release of this stinker only confirms those rumors.

Blu-Ray Rating: 1.0/5.0

Almost as if it was made on a bet to see how many cliches writer/director Marc Lawrence (“Miss Congeniality”) could merge into one film, “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” blends the fish-out-of-water concept with the romantic reconciliation genre in which two bickering halves of a couple rekindle the love they had when they first met. Both sub-genres have been overdone to the point of exhaustion but Lawrence finds new ways to beat a dead horse.

Did You Hear About the Morgans? was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 16th, 2010.
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Home Video

The title characters are Paul (Hugh Grant) and Meryl Morgan (Sarah Jessica Parker), a pair of vile New York socialites on the verge of divorce who happen to become witnesses in a high profile murder case. They enter WITSEC and are forced to relocate to a small Wyoming town. With one horrendous script, Lawrence gets to make fun of both city and country folk while presenting viewers with two of the least likable romantic leads in a very long time.

Did You Hear About the Morgans? was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 16th, 2010. Photo credit: Sony Pictures Home Video

The fatal flaw of “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” is a common one in the modern romantic comedy - unlikable lead characters. Paul and Meryl Morgan are such selfish, whiny brats that you’d rather see them get accidentally shot on a hunting trip than get back together. Romantic comedies don’t work if you don’t care about the pair that’s romantically linked and it’s impossible to care about these poorly written, lazily performed twits.

Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are talented enough that they should have known better than this mess and it’s clear that, at some point, they realized the train wreck in which they were participating as neither has given a more lackluster, for-the-paycheck performance in their entire career than this chemistry-free mess.

Luckily, audiences turned away from it in theaters with a remarkable 3.7/10 on IMDB, 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, and couldn’t break a measly $30 million domestic gross. Most people ignored the question “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” You should too.

Special features on the Blu-ray release of “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” include a commentary with director Marc Lawrence, Hugh Grant, and Sarah Jessica Parker, Deleted Scenes and Outtakes, “Cowboys and Cosmopolitans: The Stars of Did You Hear About the Morgans?,” and “Park Avenue Meets the Prairie: The Fashions of Did You Hear About the Morgans?”.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com