Maggie's Plan

Among many other things, the best dialogue-driven character studies can create a sense of real connectedness between the viewer and the people depicted on screen. If well narrated, those films can serve as a mirror to your own experiences or open up new perspectives on life in general. Directors that have managed to achieve this in the past like (the early) Woody Allen or Noah Baumbach are also often named as references when it comes to Rebecca Miller's latest film Maggie's Plan.

Indeed, when you saw the trailer, you got the feeling a new Baumbach is coming up: set in New York, starring Greta Gerwig playing a Gerta Gerwig-character and a plot revolving around existential questions of a group of well-educated, slightly quirky people. I love all of these elements and mixed with a cast including Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore I was very excited to see this film.

However, the aspects of indie films I mentioned above which I deem so important are all missing here. Once you have accepted the awkward premise (which is far-fetched enough) that the protagonist Maggie (Greta Gerwig) desperately wants to reunite her husband John (Ethan Hawke) with his ex-wife (Julianne Moore), the film misses all its chances to handle the characters' issues with precision and depth. This starts with the poor writing which does include some amusing lines and interesting insights (my favourite being John's take on unborn babies) but still fails to make the characters' motivations and intentions appear reasonable. Despite the fact that they are always quite short, films like The Squid and the Whale never feel rushed. In Maggie's Plan we see many rapid developments and turns in attitude that are often hard to make sense of.

Apart from problems in the script, the film suffers from the way it is directed. One major element is a trope that is more than predominant in recent cinema which comes down to a formula many directors seem to have internalised deeply: Shaky camera = Authenticity. In order to immerse the viewer within a scene, many films employ this technique, however in many cases in such a exaggerated manner that it becomes a parody of itself (Exhibit A: The Hunger Games; Counterexample (how it should be done): Children of Men). The same is the case in Maggie's Plan. It is the film's ambition to live up to its predecessors by offering a perspective that feels true to life. But unnecessary zoom-ins, shakes and pans occasionally disrupt the viewing experience. Films that rely on quiet, emotional scenes like this one benefit from a rather still, observant depiction, so that the viewer likely forgets that there is a camera.

Having said all this, I still consider Maggie's Plan an average film which is mostly due to the cast. The actors do what they can to give the weird script at least some emotional depth (even though I add Julianne Moore's choice of accent to the list of things that bewildered me). My harsh critique is probably due to high expectations. But I just didn't assume they were that high, as I would have been happy, if some main elements that separate these kinds of films from major blockbusters had been displayed.

My main concern with this review is to counter the many voices comparing this film to indie masterpieces like Frances Ha or Annie Hall. Maggie's Plan is not even close to being in the same league. To quote Pulp Fiction, it is not even the same sport.

"Maggie's Plan" is a Drama - Romance movie in which we watch woman falling in love with a married man while she was trying to have a baby. She now has to deal with her new reality since everything will change in her life.

Since I did not have any expectations from this movie I was not disappointed by it but in the end I was thinking that I lost almost two hours from my life. The plot was simple but not interesting and it reminded me the "Before" trilogy in which Ethan Hawke also plays. The direction which was made by Rebecca Miller was not the best, it was just another average work. The interpretations of Ethan Hawke who played as John and Julianne Moore who played as Georgette were also average and without reaching their potential. To sum up, I have to say that "Maggie's Plan" is a below average drama movie and I do not recommend anyone to watch it.

New Yorker Maggie Hardin (Greta Gerwig) wants to have a baby. Her relationships never last more than six months except her college romance with best friend Tony (Bill Hader) but that doesn't count. She decides to get sperm from college acquaintance, pickle entrepreneur Guy Childers. She works at an art school with Tony's wife Felicia (Maya Rudolph) and John Harding (Ethan Hawke). Maggie and John meet over a paycheck mixup and start a relationship over a novel he's trying to write. He's unhappily married to Columbia professor Georgette (Julianne Moore) with two kids.

The appeal of this movie depends a lot on one's appreciation of Gerwig's flighty, quirky persona. It's a rom-com where the romance is not the most likable. Harding starts off poorly and I never find him a good match for Maggie. Even the pickle guy is better although Tony could be the best if there is no Felicia. I'm actually glad at the turn in the second half of the movie and it becomes an anti-rom-com. The funniest relationship is between Maggie and Georgette. The movie could do with more of them together.

Greta Gerwig is one of the most interesting young stars in Hollywood. She consistently chooses interesting, under-the-radar projects that deal with human issues in a unique way. Maggie's Plan struggles to balance a grounded story that's centered upon one ridiculous romantic (or rather, unromantic) plan.

Goofy, eccentric, and mostly well-acted, Maggie's Plan is a good attempt at a Richard Linklater comedy-romance-drama plot. Really though, this film is a stranger version of Linklater's Before Trilogy. Only, it's much harder to relate to for a 22-year-old guy yet to be married or having any sort of mid-life crisis. The film deals with a half-dozen adult characters who have no clue what they truly want out of a relationship. Maggie, played by Gerwig, has an affair with John (Ethan Hawke) which ruins his marriage. In turn, the two get married, but struggle to bolster a relationship on their own. And so, thus gives us our main conflict, Maggie attempts to arrange John back up with his ex-wife to ease the pain of an actual divorce. Yes, it's that ridiculous.

I think this premise is better off as the basis of a straight comedy. At times, Maggie's Plan takes itself a little too seriously and forgets just how hard to believe its own ideas are. Should I be worried for the sanity of the main characters or should I take the ridiculousness for what it is and laugh about it? That's the constant argument I had throughout, and I don't know that the film even knows the answer.

The saving grace is that all of the actors are so dang charming and charismatic that it's hard to not like their work here. Gerwig has this angelic poise to her performance, and Ethan Hawke is Ethan Hawke. He's great in everything. Not to mention the levity brought by Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph in supporting roles, Maggie's Plan is one of the better ensemble cast assembled of this year. However, I found Julianne Moore's accent to be incredibly distracting. She's a world class actress, but I'm not sure this was her best work.

Maggie's Plan doesn't try to be the most charming nor the most poignant, but that's really the film's biggest issue. It has no real identity. When plot progression is made you don't know how to feel because there is no true basis or end goal in mind. So what could have been a goofily unpredictable rom-com-dram, turned out to be a disappointing and forgettable film for 2016.

+Gerwig is always charming

+Hader & Rudolph kill it

-Moore's accent

-Identity crisis

-Difficult to connect to

5.0/10

Greetings again from the darkness. A significant portion of Woody Allen's film career has been projects that seem designed to appeal to (sometimes only) the New York intellectual sub-culture. You know the type … those who thrive on talking (incessantly) about all the things they know, often without really accomplishing anything themselves. They are the kind of people we usually laugh at, rather than with. Filmmaker Rebecca Miller appears ready to accept the passing of the Woody Allen baton, and at a minimum, her latest is heavily influenced by his comedic-brain food.

Ms. Miller casts perfectly for her first film in six plus years (The Secret Life of Pippa Lee, 2009). Greta Gerwig plays Maggie, whose ever-evolving "plan" is both the title and focus of the film. Ethan Hawke plays John, the middle-aged crisis guy who wants desperately to be showered with attention. Julianne Moore plays Georgette, John's slightly odd and brilliant wife, and mother to their two kids. Other key players include Travis Fimmel as Guy, a pickle entrepreneur and the center piece to Maggie's master plan; Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph as friends and confidants of Maggie; and Wallace Shawn, always a treat on screen.

The story starts out pretty simple, and then gets complicated, and then kind of loses focus before ending just right. Perpetually whining Maggie has admittedly given up on ever finding the kind of true love that results in a happy family. Because of this, she has recruited former schoolmate and math whiz and pickle dude Guy to supply the missing link for her artificial insemination. This leads to one of film's rare cheap laughs and one that not even the quirky Gerwig can pull off. A payroll mishap brings Maggie and aspiring novelist John (a 'ficto-critical anthropologist' by trade) together, and her willingness to read his writing and offer some support, is all it takes to finish off John's slowly disintegrating marriage to Georgette (Ms. Moore dusting off the Euro accent she used in The Big Lebowski).

Writer/director Miller is the daughter of famed playwright Arthur Miller, who wrote Death of a Salesman and was once married to Marilyn Monroe (after Joe DiMaggio). She also directed The Ballad of Jack and Rose, which starred her husband, Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis. Much of her latest film feels contrived and over-written … as if every scene carries the burden of generating a laugh out loud moment. It shouldn't be too surprising that the ultra talented Julianne Moore creates the most interesting character, though unfortunately, she has the least amount of screen time among the three leads. It's good for a few laughs, as well as some cringing … and an ending that actually works.