This deeply dislikable comedy of embarrassment, which uses rock music like narrative Polyfilla, stars Rachel McAdams as Becky, an unintentionally unprincipled, motor-mouthed TV producer. An acerbic New York TV executive at the fictitious IBS network (Jeff Goldblum, the film's one major asset) gives her a job on a failing breakfast show and she takes it further downmarket with the speed and determination of a Stuka dive-bombing a column of refugees.

We are expected to stand up and cheer as she does so. We are also invited to admire a self-satisfied, over-the-hill celebrity anchorman and prize-winning journalist (Harrison Ford), first for standing up for traditional journalistic standards and then for becoming a good sport and joining Becky's bid to keep the show on the air by doing a weekly cookery spot. The film's British director and his American screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, don't quite understand what Preston Sturges was getting at in Sullivan's Travels.