MAGGIE’S PLAN – Review

Although a plan is at the center of Rebecca Miller’s (THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE) new film, the director barely shows her hand as she lets the characters seemingly fall as they may in her new romantic comedy. Now, calling it a rom-com may do it a bit of disservice. This cute and light film is more akin to the work of Woody Allen. So much so that I’d argue that it is actually more of a “Woody Allen film” than anything the bespectacled director has delivered in recent years.

MAGGIE’S PLAN revolves around upper-middle-class white people speaking like academic intellectuals as they try to figure out what they want in love and life, all the while, strolling through the streets of New York City. Does that ring an Allen bell to you? This isn’t the first time actress Greta Gerwig has sauntered into this type of film. She has made a modest career starring in several of Noah Baumbach’s New York films – another Woody Allen admirer. But while Baumbach has fine-tuned a rhythm and a style that is lively and practically buzzing with youthful energy, Miller has taken more the tropes from Allen’s films and reconfigured them into a story that draws parallels to Shakespearian comedies – the kind where someone is always setting up another behind someone’s back. And just like in the world of Shakespeare, nothing ever goes as planned.

Maggie (Greta Gerwig) works at a New York college where aspiring novelist John (Ethan Hawke) is now an adjunct professor. She has decided that she’s ready to become a mom and begins to take the steps to get artificially inseminated. Her first plan is interrupted though when a friendly relationship between writer and muse turns into love between John and Maggie. This, of course, wouldn’t be a problem if weren’t for the fact that John is married with two kids to the eccentric Georgette (Julianne Moore). The marriage gets broken up, and things start off just fine for Maggie and John. That is until Maggie realizes that John’s personality is paired better with Georgette’s. So, instead of coming clean and ending her marriage, her new plan is to get the once married couple back together.

Although it sounds like a screwball comedy, Rebecca Miller’s script (from a story by Karen Rinaldi) focuses less on the laughs and more on the emotional turmoil stirring within each of these flawed individuals. All three characters are technically self-centered manipulative people, but they aren’t repugnant because of the three likable leads. Greta Gerwig is practically designed to be charming, even if she’s the schemer of the bunch. Even Moore as the highfalutin academic, has a way of delivering a silly persona that walks the line between absurd and heartfelt. And of course, Ethan Hawke can play the professor role in his sleep. He seems destined to play the father figure who doesn’t know what he really wants in life.

All of the characters spend the entirety of MAGGIE’S PLAN discussing each other ad nauseam to the point that the film sort of goes in circles. In a way, I guess that’s what director Rebecca Miller intends. She’s crafted a film that feels like a modern day telling of a tale from the Bard, while simultaneously showing the immoral implications of these self-obsessed individuals. Thanks in part to Miller’s seemingly effortless handle on the story and her genuine love for the characters, you walk away from the film feeling as if she wants these three to find their way in this mad circle of life.

Overall rating: 3.5 out of 5

MAGGIE’S PLAN is now playing in select cities