Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009)
Directed by Marc Lawrence
No — Did You Hear About the Morgans? is not woke, scoring 6 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Did You Hear About the Morgans? arrived in December of 2009, a romantic comedy thriller about a Manhattan power couple who witness a murder and are relocated to a fictional Wyoming town under witness protection.
Consciousness Markers
The cast is overwhelmingly white, with only a handful of minor non-white performers (e.g., Seth Gilliam as a U.S. Marshal) and a Chinese adopted baby as a plot device. No meaningful diverse casting effort.
Meryl is a successful real estate agent, but the film is a conventional reconciliation rom-com centered on marriage, infidelity, and motherhood rather than any feminist critique.
The only racial element is the adopted Chinese baby in the epilogue, treated as a sentimental coda rather than any engagement with racial identity or consciousness.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext whatsoever.
No environmental or climate themes present.
No critique of wealth, capitalism, or class structures; the protagonists are affluent New Yorkers whose wealth is never interrogated.
No body positivity themes or messaging.
No neurodivergent characters or themes.
No historical revisionism; the film is a contemporary fictional comedy.
No preachy messaging or moral lecturing; the film is a lightweight fish-out-of-water romantic comedy.
Why it received this score
Did You Hear About the Morgans? arrived in December of 2009, a romantic comedy thriller about a Manhattan power couple who witness a murder and are relocated to a fictional Wyoming town under witness protection. Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play Paul and Meryl Morgan, whose marriage is already collapsing when the plot hands them a bear, a rodeo, and a bull suit. The film was received poorly, and its reputation has not improved with age. It is a fish-out-of-water comedy of the most conventional sort, content to let its stars trade barbed quips until the third act forces a reconciliation.
From a cultural standpoint, the film is remarkably inert. The cast is almost entirely white, with Seth Gilliam appearing briefly as a U.S. Marshal and a Chinese adopted baby arriving in the epilogue as a sentimental flourish. No LGBTQ+ presence registers at any point. Meryl has a career in real estate, but the narrative concerns itself with infidelity, infertility, and the repair of a marriage, which is not the material of a feminist argument. The affluent New Yorkers at the center never have their wealth examined, and no environmental, bodily, neurological, or historical themes intrude. The film does not lecture. It has nothing to say and no interest in saying it.
Which leaves us with a curious artifact: a studio comedy so thoroughly insulated from the progressive currents of its own moment that it plays today like a time capsule from a less examined era. There is a certain honesty in that. The film wants only to be pleasant, and it fails at even that, but it fails without pretense.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
New Yorkers Paul and Meryl Morgan seem to have it all -- except that their marriage is crumbling around them. But their romantic woes are small compared to the trouble they find themselves in after witnessing a murder. To protect them from an assassin, federal agents whisk away Paul and Meryl to a small town in Wyoming, where their marriage will crash and burn, or their passion will reignite.
Questions about Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Is Did You Hear About the Morgans? woke?
No — Did You Hear About the Morgans? is not woke, scoring 6 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Did You Hear About the Morgans? have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 12.
How does Did You Hear About the Morgans? compare to other 2009 movies?
It ranks #144 of the 230 films from 2009 we've scored; their average is 14. The wokest is Home (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.