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How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 29 December 2015
A movie review of MAGGIE'S PLAN.Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015. (For more information, click here.)
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“I might save it like mad money style,” Tony (Bill Hader)
Later, lecturer/author John (Ethan Hawke) calls “like” a language condom. Rebecca Miller delivers an arch indie comedy with aplomb, alternating between highbrow wordsmith chortles and rom-com relationship skewers. The director brings along genre ambassadors Greta Gerwig-Hawke-Julianne Moore-Hader-Maya Rudolph for the ride; doing a DIE HARD or a GROSSE POINTE BLANK, where even minor characters get great lines and feel more than space filler. After dramas THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE and THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE, Miller now flexes a comic artistic muscle so naturally it’s as if she has been doing it her whole career.
Later, lecturer/author John (Ethan Hawke) calls “like” a language condom. Rebecca Miller delivers an arch indie comedy with aplomb, alternating between highbrow wordsmith chortles and rom-com relationship skewers. The director brings along genre ambassadors Greta Gerwig-Hawke-Julianne Moore-Hader-Maya Rudolph for the ride; doing a DIE HARD or a GROSSE POINTE BLANK, where even minor characters get great lines and feel more than space filler. After dramas THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE and THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE, Miller now flexes a comic artistic muscle so naturally it’s as if she has been doing it her whole career.
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Greta Gerwig’s Maggie is the focus. Gerwig has now reached Woody Allen levels of movie brand recognition at only 32 years old. Fashioning a fixated, loquacious cinematic persona, it might have got tired had the actress wisely not opted for a film surrounded by able support. When Wallace Shawn pops up in just a cameo, you know this is classy territory.
Seeing friends, husband Tony and wife, Felicia (Rudolph), with a baby, catalyses in Maggie the desire to have a child regardless of her partnerless status. Conventional mainstream movies would have her trajectory come into the sphere of a suitable bachelor and then, after a fight triggering the third act, rapprochement and happy ever after. Yawn. Instead, the titular lead picks mathematician turned pickled gherkin merchant (this is an indie flick, the bohemian is de rigueur), Guy (Travis Fimmel), to be the seed donor.
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Complicating matters is a mutual crush between Maggie and university colleague John (Hawke). The former describes her job as bridge between art and commerce. With her M.B.A., she helps students realise their artistic potential financially; cue, awkward ‘Dragons Den’-style pitch meeting for an upcoming graduate who has a plush toy for kids, where the body’s organs can be taken out. John is a ficto-critical anthropologist. Yeah, academic hipster hilarity is on the agenda. (Shouldn’t academic hipster comedy be a new subgenre? Count one in.)
John, the college lady magnet (or as Felicia calls him, a “pantie melter”), is married to the brilliant Danish thinker, Georgette (Julianne Moore). In her shadow and stifled, the self-absorbed John hones in on our heroine. By the way, who doesn’t love it when Julianne Moore channels her arty BIG LEBOWSKI persona? "No one unpacks commodity fetishism like you do." Brilliant. Anyway, as Maggie is inserting Guy’s seed with a syringe, John turns up at her door and things get heated. Cut to three years later, and they are now together with a daughter, Lily. The plan of the title refers to Maggie’s restlessness and her Shakespearean scheme.
Like a smooth glass of whatever you enjoy imbibing, MAGGIE’S PLAN goes down a treat. Seemingly effortless, this is so watchable.
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