Hey, did you hear about Did You Hear About the Morgans? That’s OK. Neither has most of the country, as the movie, a lukewarm romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, tanked at the box office a few months ago.

Your basic fish-out-of-water set-up, it sees the two stars playing an estranged New York couple who witness a murder and get shipped off to Wyoming by the Feds for protection where they encounter a bear, learn how to fire rifles and ride horses and, of course, resolve their differences.

Grant, with his patented stammering, and Parker, with her increasingly annoying “I’m a New Yorker” attitude, are on cruise control here, though Grant manages to bring a few lines to life. Like how he describes an ugly purple welt on his shoulder as looking like “a little map of Ireland.”

The writing and direction by Marc Lawrence (Music & Lyrics, Two Weeks Notice) is equally halfhearted, and so many of the situations that seemed funny on paper–including said encounter with a bear–merely make you chuckle instead of laugh out loud. He also fails to make much out of the minor subplot involving Grant’s and Parker’s assistants (Elisabeth Moss and Jesse Liebman).

Lawrence is a little more successful with the Red State/Blue State humor, like how the small town has only 14 Democrats and, emphasizes a teen girl in a cowboy hat, “we know who they are.” And Mary Steenburgen and Sam Elliott are perfectly cast as the meat-eating, gun-loving (cue the Sarah Palin jokes) Wyoming couple who house, and tolerate, the bickering East Coast witnesses.

As a whole the film, though more tolerable than most rom-coms, is the cinematic equivalent of a great big sigh, something I imagine Grant and Parker both did when they agreed to appear in it for a paycheck. Oh, well, at least we now know that 75-year-old Wilford Brimley is still alive and kicking and able to play cranky old curmudgeons. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Drama/Romance

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 3/16/10

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