‘Maggie’s Plan’ Delights and Charms (FILM REVIEW)

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I’ve always wanted to like Woody Allen. I’ve never been able to. I get it, I think, especially with his older works. But I’ve never been able to see the supposed genius of him in any meaningful way. His films, to my mind, do little but meander helplessly through narrative in much the way he meanders helplessly through an angst-ridden existence. But I think I truly understand it now, having seen Maggie’s Plan.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Maggie’s Plan is not a Woody Allen film. He had nothing to do with it, whatsoever. The film, written and directed by Rebecca Miller, is, however, the closest you can probably get to seeing a Woody Allen film, without having to suffer the indignities (or potential moral quandaries) of having to actually see a Woody Allen film.

Like Allen supposedly does, Miller has crafted a film that manages to capture the angst and ennui of a New York existence in a delightful and hilarious manner. It features the same recognizable intellectual elitist character archetypes that Allen uses, but under Miller’s hand it feels, somehow, actually authentic and not just a series of masturbatory scenes stitched together in an attempt to display its own brilliance.

The film follows the lovable Maggie (Greta Gerwig), a sort of hapless intellectual who teaches at a liberal arts college while maintaining a steadfast commitment to being single while dealing with an overwhelming desire to have a baby. It’s then she meets John (Ethan Hawke), a fellow adjunct at the college who’s stuck in a loveless marriage with Georgette (Julianne Moore). Maggie and John, naturally, fall in love, breaking up his marriage and getting her pregnant. Some years later, however, Maggie realizes that maybe she didn’t love John, and she concocts a plan to reunite her husband with his ex-wife.

Gerwig is, as ever, delightful to watch as the stumbling Maggie. In another movie, she might be the villain, the heartless busy body who breaks up a marriage to service her own selfish desires. But that’s never really the case in real life, and here you can’t help but feel almost sorry for Maggie. She’s not a bad person; she didn’t set out to break up anything. She’s a woman caught up in a wave of events that she can’t get out of, with hilarious results.

This is part of what makes Gerwig the current darling of the indie-scene. Her characters are often absurd, but always relatable. She brings her roles to life in unique ways, each of them with seemingly a life and existence of their own and not just similar archetypes cut from the same cloth. She’s perfect, here, with Miller’s guidance and script giving her plenty to play around with in order to actualize Maggie on the big screen.

While Hawke and Gerwig lack a certain chemistry, the nature of the narrative being what it is, that’s sort of the point. Hawke himself as become a master of the aloof male character, cruising through his existence without an inkling of understanding of anything going on around him. John, then, almost represents the apotheosis of the role Hawke has been perfecting since the mid-90’s, and he plays it well.

Once again, however, the real star of this show is Miller herself. Her script is laced with wit and biting takes about the lives of the bohemian intellectual; it never criticizes, but it does serve as a sort of mirror for their insular worlds, perhaps offering them an opportunity to see themselves outside the confines of their ivory towers. It does this, however, without ever patronizing. Neither its subject nor its audience is ever talked down to, and the result is a film that is wickedly sharp and hilarious.

There are more than a few movie-stealing moments provided by Felicia and Tony (Maya Rudolph and Bill Hader), Maggie’s friends who serve as a sort of Greek chorus and offering insight into the audience perspective of Maggie’s relationships and shenanigans. The two of them have always had brilliant chemistry, and here their comedic sensibilities play off of each other delightfully.

Maggie’s Plan can be viewed as sort of an anti-rom com. It plays with the trappings of its genre to create something entirely outside of its realm. It uses rom com devices to create an intriguing look at the life of a woman just struggling to find happiness in the face of her absurd world. It subverts the very expectation of what a rom com is and what a rom com can do, thereby creating a memorable and enjoyable narrative that neither overreaches nor underachieves. It may not break any new ground and it probably won’t win any awards, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a delightful and hilarious date movie.

Maggie’s Plan is now playing in theaters everywhere.