This just in: Morning Glory can't decide whether to skewer the morning news or wallow in its pap.

　　 So this ill-fated comedy, pollinated by Broadcast News and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, tries to do both.

　　 That's a shame, because the script, by The Devil Wears Prada screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, spreads its plot awfully thin and wastes the best performance in years by Harrison Ford.

　　 And when Glory does settle on a headline, it's a troubling one.

　　 Looking to buck struggling ratings, the morning show Daybreak struggles against bigger names and better stories served up by Good Morning America, Today and the CBS morning program ("whatever it's called," Jeff Goldblum muses). Enter Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams), a go-getter executive producer forced to revitalize the limping program, freighted with two ornery anchors, puff queen Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) and Mike Pomeroy (Ford), a journalist drawn more to political scandal than crêpe baking at the top of the hour.

　　 Given the glut of morning babble, this could have been fertile ground for director Roger Michell (Notting Hill) to update BroadcastNews with new-media realities such as political blogs and the 24-hour news cycle. Or to lampoon the shrill personalities who rule the morning landscape.

　　 Instead, Morning Glory endorses no candidate. It tries to force-feed a romance between McAdams and station stud Adam Bennett (Patrick Wilson) and ultimately takes a strange journalistic stand. Lighten up, it tells hard-news junkies. Mornings are for smiles and frittata recipes.（英文影评） The entertainment-vs.-news debate has been going on for years, McAdams tells a resigned Ford, "and your side lost!"

　　 If the film is any indication, we all did. Where's the pompous goofiness of Daybreak's anchors, à la Will Ferrell's Burgundy, or the hot-tempered newsroom personalities so deftly captured by Broadcast? Glory isn't silly or scathing, and can play as if it doesn't want to offend a core demographic.

　　 For his part, Ford is dandy as a beleaguered newsman watching his profession circle the drain. He's an actor who has lost range over the years, but his sneer and grimace work here. He manages three smiles and one laugh through the entirety of the film. But, given his new boss, the irritation is reasonable.

　　 Keaton, too, seems comfortable as the harried matron of pablum, and Morning Glory finds its groove when it plays Ford off Keaton, or chucks its weatherman (the plucky Steve Park) onto roller coasters or into raging seas in pursuit of the story. Neither Ford nor Keaton sound much like anchors, but they've clearly had experience with bright-eyed entertainment executives fresh off the turnip truck.

　　 Those moments, though, are too fleeting to keep the film afloat. For all its on-air talent and parody-rich subject matter, Glory's approach is too broad and facile to save it from a brief run.