Becky Fuller is an EP for a small city television affiliate. She works hard, produces a great show and all her workers around her are happy. When she gets the horrible news surrounding a budget cut, regardless of talent, she is let go. Trying to pick up the pieces and move forward, she bumps into a job at a fourth place television station in New York City. She is given the challenge to resurrect the television station and do whatever it takes to get that done. So, Becky fires one of the anchors and finds a replacement in an old, bitter news man named Mike. Thinking she has done something great, she soon finds out that her plan is hitting roadblocks thanks to Mike’s bitter nature of wanting to report hard hitting news and not fluffy morning stories.
First, the good about this movie. The performances given by Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton are simply fun. Ford’s news battered personality plays nicely off of McAdams’ passion driven executive producer attitude. In between there is Diane Keaton’s Colleen who simply wants to have some sort of stability for their morning show. It’s very plausible how each person acts and reacts, and it’s fun to watch the personality of the characters rubbing against each other. The trio puts together a solid story with a clear goal.
With that said, I didn’t buy into the love story Paramount was trying to push. Patrick Wilson’s Adam Bennett is a forced fit in the storyline. Someone high up must have thought McAdam’s needed a love interest and somehow that was pushed into all. One thing it did do is establish what type of worker Becky was and what she ‘obsessed’ about, but the story didn’t come back to Becky and Adam’s relationship enough to make it romantic. One thing I noticed, and my wife brought up, was that you would have these giant empty gaps where Becky and Adam didn’t talk to each other, but then you would have them romantically embrace like they’ve been going out for years. It just didn’t make sense and it wasn’t believable. Becky was a big enough character to run the show on her own (no pun intended), so there was little need to make Adam an important cog in her machine.
The other portion of the film, which many critics despised, was how cliche’ the movie was as a whole. I won’t fight that notion that it was a cliche’, but the story was still somewhat entertaining. Isn’t that why we go to movies in the first place? To be entertained? I had no problem with the predictability of it all, as I enjoy going on the same rollercoaster when I go to King’s Island, though I know what to expect.
I just had a huge issue with the love story feeling forced.
That’s my two-bits on the movie, let’s talk about the Blu-ray. This was one of those movies where there were fun colors, good lighting and plenty of majestic landscape to make the Blu-ray worth watching. Was it the greatest looking Blu-ray ever? Not even close, but it still looked pretty and helped to serve a ‘fun’ purpose with the film. It looked great in 1080p. The soundtrack came through pretty beautifully as well. Excellent stuff in DTS-HD 5.1 Dolby.
As for the features, here’s what you’re looking at:
– Commentary by Director Roger Mitchell and Writer Aline Brosh McKenna
– Delete Scenes (HD)
While the commentary is nice and the deleted scenes are okay, I really wanted to see a gag reel or a ‘making of’ featurette on this one. Hearing commentary from Ford, Keaton and McAdams would have been nice as well. I wanted a bit more, but didn’t get it.
