MAY 24, 2016
Did you ever want to return a product that you’re tired of using but you have to come up with a plan to get the store to take it back? Sometimes it even works. Too bad that you can’t do that with boyfriends.
Or can you?
“Maggie’s Plan” appears to be modeled on those New York-centric romantic comedies that Woody Allen used to make where his characters live in a colorful part of Manhattan, have fantastic jobs and say marvelously witty things to each other.
The colorful neighborhood here is the area around Washington Square in the Village, and Maggie (current indie-movie queen Greta Gerwig) has a fantastic job at The New School. She is interested in having a baby but not terribly interested in having a father come with it. So she asks her college friend Guy (Travis Fimmel), who has become a successful artisanal pickle maker (yes, it’s that kind of movie) to donate his sperm, which he is happy to provide quickly. (“It’s jizz in a jif,” he quips.)
As luck would have it, at the same time Maggie meets and falls for John Harding (Ethan Hawke), a ficto-critical anthropologist (what did I tell you about these jobs?), who asks her to critique his new novel chapter-by-chapter. As he listens to Maggie’s perceptive critiques, John finds himself falling in love with her — the only problem is that he is already married to ice princess Georgette (Julianne Moore sporting an accent just this side of Madeline Kahn in “Blazing Saddles”), a tenured Columbia University professor who seems to be married to her work.
Cut to a few years later, and Maggie & John are now married with a baby daughter of their own. John has become a huge success, and now he is the one married to his work. Although Maggie appears to be a great mom, she soon finds herself falling out of love with John. She expresses that frustration to her best friend Felicia (Maya Rudolph), who facetiously wonders if Maggie could somehow just return him to Georgette. That’s when Maggie’s plan begins to take shape as how to take the tiresome product (John) back to the store (Georgette).
“Maggie’s Plan” was written and directed by Rebecca Miller, who, over the last 20 years has amassed an impressive body of work in a string of critically-acclaimed (if little-seen) independent films. She is probably best known to the public as the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and the wife of Daniel Day-Lewis. (Since Daniel’s knighthood, her official title is now Lady Day-Lewis, which I think is so cool.)
Her script shows some sparkle in the film’s first hour, but once Maggie’s plan goes into effect, the film begins spinning its wheels — all of its forward momentum is lost. Not at fault is the film’s cast. Gerwig is as appealing here as she’s ever been, and when her role is minimized in the film’s last act, the film sags because of her absence. Hawke brings his considerable acting chops to bear here, even though John is a rather lightweight role. It’s always great to see Rudolph and her fellow “SNL” alum Bill Hader, who have a potent chemistry together — you are really convinced that these two characters, for better or worse, are married. And, despite the accent, Moore brings a certain pathos to the part of Georgette, and she handily carries the film’s third act.
“Maggie’s Plan” has all the elements of a successful romantic comedy– they’re just put together in a frustratingly slapdash fashion.
GRADE: B-
