Maggie's Plan (2015)
This movie came to me with rave reviews as a part of a curated selection of films. The critic who spoke to me about it - an actual movie critic - talked about the movie's much celebrated subversion of romantic comedy tropes and Rebecca Miller's directorial dedication to the honest, messy depiction of adulthood and romance. They also talked about Miller almost entirely in terms of who her father is and who her husband is, so I wasn't taking the greatest stock in his view of the movie from a critical feminist angle. The story had potential: a woman plans to have a kid on her own, but it's complicated when she falls for a fucking loser of a professor at the university she works for who also happens to be married with kids.
While I appreciated those two things - the movie is unwavering in its commitment to the messiness of romantic and familial entanglements, and it is both romantic and a comedy without falling into the rom-com class - I also found the frustration I felt with Maggie's Plan to greatly outweigh the experience of watching it. Not all movies need to be happy ones, certainly, but there needs to a purpose to the elements put forth in them. So much of this movie just felt needlessly and randomly aggravating, strung together with tonal inconsistency.
I have heard great things about Greta Gerwig's upcoming directorial debut, Ladybird, and thankfully Maggie's Plan really warmed me to her specifically. Her titular character is thoroughly unlikable at a lot of points, and at others just generally frustrating, but she plays her with a real honesty and buckets of earnestness in a way that feels appropriate (even when she's talking herself into dissolving someone else's marriage). Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph are good bouncing points as her best friends, and everything Julianne Moore does as the love interest's wife/ex-wife/partner/ex-partner is phenomenal, bar her inconsistent accent. Ethan Hawke plays the boo-hoo stifled creative Maggie falls for, and fuck, his character was atrocious. I understand that he was supposed to be atrocious, but this was appalling. There was no clarity in the intentionality of the movie - are we supposed to hate him? Are we supposed to understand him? Are we supposed to root for any of the relationships in the movie? The way the story is composed, I get the strong sense that we are, but it's impossible to do.
If it were a little more self-aware, this would almost be It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia level "terrible-people-doing-terrible-stuff" viewing. For all of the moments of insight and emotional resonance, there's so many times I wanted to take a red pen to the script. It even had one of those tortured subplots that's in every movie marauding as intelligent where a character is trying to write a piece of High Art literature, and every glance we're given into that world made me want to never write again. I think they just needed to commit! Commit to the idea that your main character is young and naive and falls for the lure of academic prestige, and go all in on the work of your awful author being capital-A awful.
Speaking of, this movie wants to cover an entire lifetime (much like the other movie I saw from this curated collection, Sunset Song) and has no idea where to focus and where to bounce around. The pacing feels rushed from an edit bay, and it becomes hard to invest in certain storylines while others are downright exhausting. That's all really sad, because the emotional honesty and fine details are what really shine in this movie.
Rating: 5/10 - Lots of potential, but I found the characters stunted in their development and the pacing was almost beyond salvaging; my god, though, there were parts that punched me in the face with how deeply I related to them and how desperately I wanted to repress those feelings.
While I appreciated those two things - the movie is unwavering in its commitment to the messiness of romantic and familial entanglements, and it is both romantic and a comedy without falling into the rom-com class - I also found the frustration I felt with Maggie's Plan to greatly outweigh the experience of watching it. Not all movies need to be happy ones, certainly, but there needs to a purpose to the elements put forth in them. So much of this movie just felt needlessly and randomly aggravating, strung together with tonal inconsistency.
I have heard great things about Greta Gerwig's upcoming directorial debut, Ladybird, and thankfully Maggie's Plan really warmed me to her specifically. Her titular character is thoroughly unlikable at a lot of points, and at others just generally frustrating, but she plays her with a real honesty and buckets of earnestness in a way that feels appropriate (even when she's talking herself into dissolving someone else's marriage). Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph are good bouncing points as her best friends, and everything Julianne Moore does as the love interest's wife/ex-wife/partner/ex-partner is phenomenal, bar her inconsistent accent. Ethan Hawke plays the boo-hoo stifled creative Maggie falls for, and fuck, his character was atrocious. I understand that he was supposed to be atrocious, but this was appalling. There was no clarity in the intentionality of the movie - are we supposed to hate him? Are we supposed to understand him? Are we supposed to root for any of the relationships in the movie? The way the story is composed, I get the strong sense that we are, but it's impossible to do.
If it were a little more self-aware, this would almost be It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia level "terrible-people-doing-terrible-stuff" viewing. For all of the moments of insight and emotional resonance, there's so many times I wanted to take a red pen to the script. It even had one of those tortured subplots that's in every movie marauding as intelligent where a character is trying to write a piece of High Art literature, and every glance we're given into that world made me want to never write again. I think they just needed to commit! Commit to the idea that your main character is young and naive and falls for the lure of academic prestige, and go all in on the work of your awful author being capital-A awful.
Speaking of, this movie wants to cover an entire lifetime (much like the other movie I saw from this curated collection, Sunset Song) and has no idea where to focus and where to bounce around. The pacing feels rushed from an edit bay, and it becomes hard to invest in certain storylines while others are downright exhausting. That's all really sad, because the emotional honesty and fine details are what really shine in this movie.
Rating: 5/10 - Lots of potential, but I found the characters stunted in their development and the pacing was almost beyond salvaging; my god, though, there were parts that punched me in the face with how deeply I related to them and how desperately I wanted to repress those feelings.
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