MAGGIE’S PLAN

You live long enough, regrets are part of the process; what in heaven’s name possessed me to buy this house, take this job,  accept this marriage proposal? Herein lies Maggie’s conundrum: she wants a child, not a husband, finds a “donor”, then surprisingly is cursed with a self-absorbed, pseudo-intellectual, totally ineffective in the “husband” department and the film mushily proceeds with her plan to dump her man “John” on his previous wacky wife, “Georgette”, a more suitable pair could not be imagined.

Writer/director Rebecca Miller’s “Maggie’s Plan” is a millennial formula, applicable to many disillusioned twenty-first century women looking and finally giving up on finding “Mr. Goodbar”; Gerta Gerwig (cemented in the role of a ditzy dame, a “Holly Golightly” without style) as Maggie, is a nice, non-materialistic, benignly intelligent, “Quakerish” girl who meets “John” (if only Ethan Hawke did not perpetually sport the look of  an unshaven indigent) a writer, suffering from a “block” of mountainous proportions. The marriage is a disaster and Maggie’s solicits John’s ex-wife, shrewish Georgette,  an anorexic, annoyingly profound genius, afflicted with a Danish accent (Julianne Moore) to plot his return to the original nest.

At times whimsical, always pedantic, lacking the verve and substance of those immersed in ficto-critical anthropology (or whatever).

“Guy” (Travis Fimmel) as a pickle manufacturer, is genuinely endearing, honest and elevates “Maggie’s Plan” from banality to interesting, unfortunately not interesting enough.

TWO & 1/2 STARS!!

Peneflix