Humor doesn’t click in ‘Did You Hear About the Morgans"’

Published 6:30 pm Thursday, December 17, 2009

One mistake frequently made by comedy filmmakers is to place pauses after the punch lines in scenes, anticipating the audience’s laughter will fill in the blank spots.

If the resulting film is something less than a laugh riot, you’re stuck with some very uncomfortable silences. “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” is a film with too many of these empty beats; I don’t think I actually heard crickets chirping, but the effect was similar.

Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play a pair of die-hard New Yorkers, currently separated because of an infidelity. Although estranged from each other, they’re forced to spend a week in close proximity because (hold your breath) they’re taken into the witness protection program after being identified at a murder scene.

Well, there have been worse concepts. Grant and Parker are whisked away to a speck of a town called Ray, Wyoming, and put under the protective custody of a crusty sheriff (Sam Elliott, with a 10-gallon mustache) and his gun-happy wife (Mary Steenburgen).

The culture-clash jokes are just a little too easy to spot from here on out. I didn’t mind so much the presence of a grizzly bear, because I think we can all agree that nothing scores higher on the comedy scale than someone spritzing himself in the face with bear repellent.

The real problems with this movie are issues of timing. Nobody looks quite comfortable here, even with an expert comedy player like Hugh Grant on the scene.

Grant is so adept at glib, graceful humor that you have to wince a little to see him put on a rodeo clown’s baggy pants and get chased by a bull. Can the re-emergence of the bear repellent be far away? (Answer: No.)

Writer-director Marc Lawrence has made two previous films with Grant, the last being “Music &Lyrics,” which also tried to summon up the spirit of old screwball comedies. The structure is there, and so are the actors (although Sarah Jessica Parker appears crimped by her one-note character).

But even the good lines don’t land with much authority, which is where those awkward silences come in. Even exiled to the Wyoming prairie, timing is everything.

“Did You Hear About the Morgans?” ½

Estranged married couple (and diehard New Yorkers) Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are sent to Wyoming as part of the witness protection program. Alas, little comedy gold is mined from this situation, because the movie’s sense of timing is weirdly off and the culture-clash jokes are just too easy.

Rated: PG-13 for subject matter

Showing: Alderwood Mall, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Everett, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Meridian, Metro, Thornton Place Stadium, Woodinville, Cascade Mall