Enjoyment of Maggie’s Plan is directly proportional to your love of movies set in NYC and any of the actors who appear in the film: Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore and Ethan Hawke. If none of those factors appeal to you, don’t bother to read anymore about Maggie’s Plan.
Maggie’s Plan is a self-conscious, almost Rube Goldbergian screwball comedy or Stanley Cavell’s take on the remarriage comedy from the perspective of the other woman. Gerwig plays the titular character in Maggie’s Plan. Maggie is a bridge between the intellectual and the practical. She wants a baby, and just when she is ready to take matters into her own hands, she meets the right guy. Or does she? And if he isn’t the right guy, how can she fix the situation without breaking anyone’s heart?
Maggie’s Plan is simultaneously an amoral and extremely moral film. Maggie’s Plan is extremely moral because there is a general agreement regarding what is good or bad behavior. For example, adultery is bad even if people fall in or out of love. Maggie’s Plan is also extremely amoral in that even people who act badly are still embraced and face no long-term consequences. After initial outrage and shock, everyone can land on their feet and end up in the place that they always belonged even if they failed to initially recognize it. No opportunity is lost forever, and everyone is likeable. Side note: I know that Greta Gerwig did not write Maggie’s Plan, but parts of it felt autobiographical.
Maggie’s Plan is just as fantastical as any Marvel movie. Maggie’s Plan features NYC as an adult playground with no consequences where you can make a living as an artisanal pickle entrepreneur or a ficto-critical anthropologist. It is always nice to see a movie where a poet rents a large apartment in NYC. Movies give us a world that we wish existed.
Maggie’s Plan features some delightful performances by SNL alum, Maya Rudolph and Bill Hader, and Travis Fimmel, who brought the same mixture of delicate and gentle intensity and quirky masculinity that he displays in Vikings. I would not mind revisiting those characters in a movie solely devoted to them. As always, Julianne Moore hijacks Maggie’s Plan with her excellence. Ethan Hawke is the Richard Linklater’s Ethan Hawke.
Maggie’s Plan is an enjoyable comedic romp that could be annoying if you hate intellectual types or anything that remotely smacks of formulaic plotlines, but for me, the mix was an enjoyable trip into a fantasy world where everything works out and everyone can find happiness without acrimony over the past.