One of the perennial, most tedious questions the movie business asks about the movie business is, “Who is the next Julia Roberts?†In the last decade it has been asked, and not answered, dozens of times. In 40 years, when Julia Roberts is an octogenarian, people will still be asking it. Since 2005, when Rachel McAdams finished up her Mean Girls–The Notebook–Red Eye trifecta, she has been one of the front-runners to be the actress everyone agrees is most like the actress Julia Roberts, who is not only likable and charming, but also extremely bankable. But after 2005, McAdams slowed her roll: She didn’t do a movie between 2006 and 2008 and has generally avoided making the romantic comedies that would get a person tagged as the next JRo. No longer! McAdams’s next film, the romantic, workplace comedy Morning Glory (from J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot, no less), about the backstage shenanigans at a morning news show, is so obviously going to restart this conversation, it might as well include a title card saying, “and starring maybe the next Julia Roberts (if you all decide to help this movie make a ton of money).†McAdams plays the producer of the failing, trivial DayBreak who hires Harrison Ford to do curmudgeonly on-air banter with Diane Keaton. You know what is not bad, just by definition? Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton doing banter! Also not bad: age-appropriate love interests. Also not bad: Jeff Goldblum and Patrick Wilson being around. Despite the fact that the emotional climax of the film is included in the trailer, and that this whole thing is a poor man’s version of Broadcast News, we must confess this is sort of working for us.
