X
- 2016
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 38 m
- 2016
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 38 m
Summary Maggie Hardin (Greta Gerwig) is a vibrant and practical thirty-something New Yorker working in education, who without success in finding love, decides now is the time to have a child on her own. But when she meets John Harding (Ethan Hawke), an anthropology professor and struggling novelist, Maggie falls in love for the first time, and a...
Directed By: Rebecca Miller
Written By: Karen Rinaldi, Rebecca Miller
- 2016
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 38 m
- 2016
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 38 m
Maggie's Plan
76
6.3
Where to Watch
Summary Maggie Hardin (Greta Gerwig) is a vibrant and practical thirty-something New Yorker working in education, who without success in finding love, decides now is the time to have a child on her own. But when she meets John Harding (Ethan Hawke), an anthropology professor and struggling novelist, Maggie falls in love for the first time, and a...
Directed By: Rebecca Miller
Written By: Karen Rinaldi, Rebecca Miller
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 35 Critic Reviews
76
94% Positive
33 Reviews
33 Reviews
6% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 35 Critic Reviews
76
94% Positive
33 Reviews
33 Reviews
6% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Miller’s New York, full of academics who still have the capacity to act like children, isn’t exactly new, but plenty fascinating.
Witty, observational, and hilarious, Maggie’s Plan is the kind of richly complex dramedy that proves to be the rare picture that serves both halves of that genre description fully, equally, and satisfyingly.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 64 User Ratings
6.3
56% Positive
36 Ratings
36 Ratings
25% Mixed
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
19% Negative
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 64 User Ratings
6.3
56% Positive
36 Ratings
36 Ratings
25% Mixed
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
19% Negative
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
I LOVED Maggie's Plan. What I loved most about this wonderful film was the dialog, which comes at you at a relentless and nonstop and WONDERFUL way. Gerwig is so believable and another's reviewers comparison to Woody Allen-era Diane Keaton are spot on. Not that she's a Keaton clone, she's comes across so sincere and really wanting to do the right thing, but things just don't work out. The few pieces of music fit in so perfectly (altho I"ve always hated Bruce Springsteen, I actually found my self liking Dancing in the Dark in the one scene with the bar band version.) There are obscure reggae cuts that feel so right and so great in the movie. The scenes involving her children are heartbreakingly adorable. And the kids are so adorable....whatever Maggie's Plan was, the results are these kids who have the most wonderful(seemed to be using that word alot) rapport with Gerwig.. Juliane Moore is great as the ice queen who turns out to be not so icy after all. This was my favorite movie so far this year. OK I'm not the greatest at telling you why, but PLEASE see this movie. This movie deserves a bigger audience(I saw it in an audience of three people) and I wish this would be come a huge suprise hit. It won't, and that will be alot of people's bad luck, because Maggie's Plan is (sorry) WONDERFUL. There's just no other word that does it.
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A perfectly cast comedy of manners that couches complex emotional questions in joyous farce and continues Gerwig’s reign as the undisputed Queen Of Quirk.
The picture is one part vintage Woody Allen, a few parts Screwball-era comedy of remarriage, and a vigorous shake of Gerwig herself, without whose particular spirit — "so pure," as an admirer puts it here, and "a little stupid" — this scenario might have trouble getting off the ground.
Maggie’s Plan exerts unmistakable charm, and once it hits its stride and the titular scheme kicks into gear, the movie takes on its own weird, giddy rhythms and really soars.
Maggie’s Plan doesn’t quite gel, but it’s very enjoyable, and it has a solid emotional core.
The script, although endearing, is too poorly edited to lift its quirks to the next level, no matter how many stars show up for roll call.
This is an extremely good movie. There are so many lovely ways to appreciate it I don't know where to start. The cast does an exceptional job. The director uses them perfectly and edits and paces things perfectly. Quality scene after quality scene. In Olympic diving they have a degree of difficulty scale. This movies degree of difficulty is at the absolute top notch. Yet, they nail scene after nuanced scene after complex scene after emotional after funny after charming scene. Critics should be raving about this movie. Its so hard to pull this sort of thing off. Because critics don't make movies they don't know how hard it is. Go see this movie and enjoy enjoy enjoy.
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A film that treats marriage and relationships like a ping pong ball. Don't get me wrong there are parts of this film that really worked for me but overall it is just decent. B-
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I've begun to feel like I'm watching a Woody Allen movie every time I see Greta Gerwig. We have the talky characters who have emotional problems and neuroses, we have the awkward situations, yada yada yada. At the end, we have the typical Woody Allen ending, everyone's happy.
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Watching "Maggie's Plan" a few thoughts went through my mind starting with the role of Maggie was begging for a 25 year old Meg Ryan and Greta Gerwig is not her. Meryl Streep better watch out if Julianne Moore decides to give her a run for believable accents and Moore should insist that Malgopsia Turzanska never be the costume designer on any of her future movies.
Rebecca Miller, screenwriter and director of "Maggie's Plan", aims partially at being a Hollywood old screwball comedy but doesn't have the pace to succeed. She also tries to bring it into the modern world with Maggie (Gerwig) deciding to be a single mother and eventually picks Guy (Travis Fimmel), a pickle artisian, to donate his sperm, (Why is hard to understand!) and even though he is willing to do it the old way she sends him to the bathroom. On that day she also starts an affair with married to Georgette (Julianne Moore) John (Ethan Hawke) an archaeologist who writes books and lectures but is in the shadow of his wife's accomplishment as a Columbia professor.
All of a sudden we see Maggie with her daughter a couple of years later, married to John, being involved with his and Georgette's children and falling out of love with John. Her plan is to reunite Georgette and John. In the middle of the movie Miller tries to alternate between an old fashioned romantic comedy, a screwball comedy, a farce and sentimentality, failing at all.
Moore and Hawke are excellent in roles that are more complex than they seem to be while Mina Sundwall, as their daughter, brings gravitas to her role when needed while Jackson Frazer, as her younger brother, is a blond hair impish boy. Bill Hader as an old friend and short love interest of Maggie's when they were in school is good showing he cares for her expressing anger at how she tries to control her and everyone she becomes involved with.
The scenes between Gerwig and Ida Rohaytn, playing her daughter Lily, are delightful adding a lot of charm to the film but aside from that, sorry, Meg Ryan was missed by me. Maya Rudolph, as Hader's wife and Gerwig's friend, once again fails to impress me.
"Maggie's Plan" is less than Rebecca Miller seemed to be aiming for but for 98 minutes it took me away from what was going on in the world outside of movies.
PS As an aside, I never heard, or maybe just wasn't aware of, an archaeologist book writer and lecturer until I met Allen's friend who is a successful archaeologist book writer and lecturer!!
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The silly season is not lifted one iota by this critically lauded, but extremely overrated comedy- drama. Comparisons can be made to a bad Woody Allen outing in so much as the film is set in New York and has a very verbose script, but similarities end there. Whereas Allen at his best employs great actors in good stories this verbiage finally adds up to nothing more than pretentious drivel. Despite a good start with early scenes promising an Art house level of sophisticated articulation, it’s not long before the eyes glaze over, the ears tune out and one is left to endure a bunch of uninteresting characters espousing little more than blah, blah, blah. All three leads are not at their best. Greta Gerwig is still Greta who? Julianne Moore continues to lose her edge in yet another downward spiral performance and even Ethan Hawke is the weakest he’s been for years. In fact, it is the supporting turn of Bill Hader that impresses most as Gerwig’s ‘say it as it is’ best friend. Ultimately the film is neither funny nor dramatic enough to make one care about any of these tiresome characters and their predicaments are totally uninvolving. As for the jolly incidental music, this is just another irritating aspect of a small and insignificantly forgettable film.
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Production Company
Black Bear,
Freedom Media,
Hall Monitor,
Hyperion Media Group,
Locomotive,
Rachael Horovitz Productions,
Round Films
Release Date May 20, 2016
Duration 1 h 38 m
Rating R
Tagline Chapter One: Maggie Meets John
Website
http://www.maggiesplanmovie.com/
Awards
Alliance of Women Film Journalists
• 2 Nominations
Women Film Critics Circle Awards
• 2 Nominations
Indiana Film Journalists Association, US
• 2 Nominations
