Critics are slightly torn over Morning Glory, the new workplace rom-com starring Rachel McAdams as a morning show producer struggling to turn her middling show into a success. Granted, the film is a little uneven. Does it want to be a workplace comedy a la Broadcast News or does it want to be a romantic comedy with McAdams and the dashing Patrick Wilson making eyes at each other? Well, it tries to be both, but it only succeeds on half of its equation.

For me, even though Morning Glory is splitting critics, the film is, on a whole, fairly delightful and enjoyable for one very important reason: Harrison Ford.  The actor has never been looser or funnier as he is playing the stodgy and cranky former newsman Mike Pomeroy, and for his addition to the film it is worth checking out.

Read more after the jump.

Morning Glory begins with Becky (McAdams) losing her producer gig at a small potatoes morning show in Jersey and her struggle to find ANY job. She eventually convinces an exec (Jeff Goldblum, who is slightly wasted in this minor role) at the IBS network (yes, the name is not lost on me) to give her an executive producer role at their shitty morning show, Daybreak, which is perpetually trailing every other network morning show. There, Becky must navigate an oddball group of people, including lead anchor/diva Collen (Diane Keaton). In attempt to revive the show, she casts the aforementioned Mike Pomeroy, a veteran, award-winning journalist, to banter and report on fluff pieces about kittens or omelets. Cue shenanigans galore.

This would be plot enough to fill its running time, with moments devoted to Becky and Mike bonding, albeit begrudgingly on Mike’s part, and Becky subjecting the weatherman to a slew of attention-grabbing stunts, but Morning Glory decided that it needed more romance and tacked on the plot device of Wilson wooing Becky as she tries to become unglued to her job. This plotline lags. You don’t care about Wilson and his relationship with McAdams, no matter how handsome he is. You continually just long for the camera to go back to Ford, who could quickly take Walter Matthau’s former place as the funniest grumpy old man alive…but, you know….an attractive one.

Ford seems to be having fun with his role here. Mike doesn’t want to degrade himself by diving headfirst into shitty fluff pieces, but Ford doesn’t seem to mind playing the grumpy asshole for laughs, and it succeeds. McAdams is cutesy enough in a role that seems like it was made for a clumsy Anne Hathaway, but she seems to overdo it sometimes by banging her head on the wall and having horrible, little girl bangs.

While Morning Glory may be a tad uneven and drags during its romantic scenes, the presence of Harrison Ford is purely radiant. Each delivery of his lines, with his gruff, gravelly voice, made me smile almost as wide as I did while watching How to Train Your Dragon.

--Darcie Duttweiler