OVP: The Morning After (1986)

Film: The Morning After (1986)

Stars: Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges, Raul Julia, Diane Salinger

Director: Sidney Lumet

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Jane Fonda)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

It's not often I give back-to-back 1-star reviews  (we gave out one yesterday for Bombardier if you missed it...there's a lot of articles on this blog, peruse at your leisure), but I haven't had the best luck with my random Oscar-watching in the past two weeks, and so well, here we are.  The Morning After is a movie that you might not have heard of if you didn't live through the 1980's.  Despite being a hit at the time, it hasn't really wandered into pop culture in the way we usually assume films of the 1980's that made this kind of cash have.  In fact, despite this receiving a Best Actress nomination, the phrase "the morning after" elicits pictures of a turned over boat to me rather than Jane Fonda & Jeff Bridges.  But the movie's Oscar nomination makes it mandatory viewing on this blog, so let's jump into it, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place on Thanksgiving (if you want tertiary connections to random holidays in a movie which is all the rage on Twitter, this is a "Thanksgiving" movie), where Alex Sternbergen (Fonda), a washed-up actress, wakes up with a dead man in her bed, but she remembers nothing about him from the night before.  She calls her agent Jackie (Julia), who turns out to also be her estranged husband, and he advises her to go to the police.  She doesn't, and goes on the run, where she meets Turner (Bridges), a former police officer, and the only person who believes she's innocent.  Strange things continue to happen to Alex, though, as the body shows up again at the next place she visits, and she starts to doubt Turner's motives.  It's actually Jackie, though, who wants out so he can marry a wealthy socialite Isabel (Salinger), and they framed her for the murder.  In the end, Jackie is arrested (but not Isabel, who seems like she'll get away scot-free) and Alex & Turner seem like they will maintain their romance as the final credits fall.

The Morning After is the kind of movie you almost want to like it's so bad.  It has a few camp factors that in theory should work, after all.  Fonda (legend) scenery-chewing as an alcoholic movie star caught in a murder reads as fun.  The HBO series The Flight Attendant kind of took this plot wholesale, but with that series they were able to lead into the more delicious aspects of the story, and also made the main character (played by Kaley Cuoco) a blast by leaning into her quirks in a way that they don't seem to understand in The Morning After.

As a result, this movie is a trainwreck.  The mystery makes no sense (Alex is famous enough to make it on the front page of the paper in LA, but somehow doesn't get indicted in the clear evidence tampering she's doing throughout the movie?), and the score is weird-way too many sharp tonal changes that telegraph what's going on (and in some cases, telegraph to nothing-the score is aggressively unhinged).  All of the acting choices are bizarre as well.  Raul Julia is maybe the best, even if his character's motives are sporadic, and Jeff Bridges plays his cop like a serial killer for no apparent reason.  Worst of all is Fonda, neither convincing as an alcoholic nor as a washed-up actress.  She's too fit & too glamorous to play this role, and she doesn't understand it at all.  Not only is this the worst nominated performance she has on her Oscar scorecard, it might be the worst performance I've ever seen from her.