"Maggie's Plan" insists that you CAN return your annoying husband back to his first wife, for a full refund.

What do you do if you’re in a bad marriage with a man who’s still in love with his ex-wife? Well, if you’re Maggie, you hope and pray that you can give him back for a refund. That’s the “plan” at the heart of the movie Maggie’s Plan, a Parent Trap of a different sort, and a film that happily thwarts the conventions of the romantic comedy. Maggie’s Plan itself is not a romantic comedy proper, but somewhere inside, there is a romantic comedy trying to get out. Instead, it’s a study of a mistress-turned-wife, an ex-wife, and the man they have to share. Each of them is fully equipped with eccentricities and neuroses. And while director Rebecca Miller often comes dangerously close to turning these three into caricatures, she knows how to rein herself in, molding them into complex human beings instead.

At the beginning of the film, Maggie arranges for an old college friend named Guy Childers (Travis Fimmel) to be her sperm donor. He is a self-described “pickle connoisseur” (perhaps a subtle allusion to a romantic comedy I adore, 1988’s Crossing Delancey). But then Maggie meets John (Ethan Hawke), a struggling academic/writer who’s married to Georgette (Julianne Moore), a brilliant professor at Columbia. John feels ignored by the far more successful Georgette (with whom he has two children), so when Maggie agrees to read a chapter of his novel, an unexpected romance develops. Cut to a few years later: Maggie and John are married with a kid of their own, but Maggie’s unhappy. She worries about being trapped in a loveless marriage, because she’s kind of tired of John, and especially because: she’s convinced that John is, in fact, still in love with Georgette.

For better or worse, Greta Gerwig has found a niche playing a wistful girl of 30 who’s a little lost, a little eccentric, and a little too smart for her own good. In Frances Ha, she was perpetually falling apart but somehow blissfully unfazed by it; in Mistress America, her wistfulness turned her into a monstrous figure, a woman hungry for social power, whose grandiose tales often defied fact-checking. And now, in Maggie’s Plan, Gerwig plays a woman trying to make a family for herself, despite the fact that she’s never been in a stable relationship for “more than six months”. Gerwig, more than any other actress, has become a poster child for the millennial generation, lost in the fragmented sea of modern life. But that’s not to say being lost is always a bad thing. What makes Gerwig’s performances likable is an often madcap defiance against her own circumstances. In all three films, she is propelled by her own definite notions of what ought to be rather than what is.

Julianne Moore’s Georgette is French, and Moore affects a sometimes distracting but, for me, enjoyably exaggerated accent that sounds like Madeline Kahn’s Lily von Schtupp in Blazing Saddles (even though Lily was German). When we first meet Georgette, she’s participating in a discussion panel, moderated by Wallace Shawn, about the Occupy movement, along with her husband. Georgette appears to be a cold, ruthless, intellectual bitch. She’s fashionably basic, and her little top-knot bun feels like the finishing touch on a woman who could kill you with merely a glance. But Julianne Moore, God bless her, hasn’t turned into Bette Davis yet, and Rebecca Miller has genuine feeling for Georgette, who’s a lot more vulnerable than it would first appear. So instead of degenerating into the villain of the movie, she becomes Maggie’s confidant.

Ethan Hawke has the least flashy performance, which probably makes his work the hardest. John is self-absorbed, the kind of guy who likes girls who like the things he says and does. And since he’s a writer, this flaw is compounded by the fact that’s already the typical needy, self-effacing artist. But even John, it turns out, is capable of love, and not merely a jerk.

The surprise MVPs of Maggie's Plan, however, are Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph, playing Maggie's married friends Tony and Felicia. Maggie once dated Tony, but while their romance fizzled, their friendship blossomed; and she works with Felicia, who says things like, "people say I'm a bitch, but I think I'm pretty nice." Every scene with these two needed to be longer.

Maggie’s Plan feels a tad slight, but the performances of Gerwig, Moore, and Hawke give the film a much-needed substance and vitality. It could easily be just another quirky indie film about quirky New Yorkers; and it while it kind of is that, the film is also something more interesting: a meditation on the ways men manipulate women (and vice versa). Georgette controls John, makes him feel invisible, but she also makes him feel needed; his relationship with Maggie is a complete reversal of that dynamic: he turns her into his housekeeper and book editor. There’s no longer any genuine love between them. And Maggie, always stuck on her own moral impulses, cannot endure a phony marriage, or a marriage that is, as he puts it, dead. “I’m in such deep oatmeal right now!” Maggie cries early in the film. It’s a wonderful, goofy line, indicative of Maggie’s character: She gets herself in plenty of messes without ever knowing how to clean them up; but somehow, she survives.

You should probably lower your expectations of 'Sisters'.

Sisters, the latest movie pairing of TV stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, is too bawdy for people who loved Baby Mama and too conventional to really sizzle as an R-rated party comedy. The film, which was directed by Jason Moore (Pitch Perfect) and written by SNL veteran Paula Pell, is banking on the hope that your love for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will somehow make you love this movie, whether it’s good or not. Sadly, Sisters is overall a disappointing effort. And it looked promising from the trailers. Sisters does offer some laughs, but just as many moments fall flat. In that sense, it’s like any episode of Saturday Night Live. (And it will probably be better a few years from now while you’re flipping channels late one night.)

At this point, the rapport between Fey and Poehler isn’t enough on which to build a movie. (But it was enough to get my expectations extremely high.) I love both 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation very much, and I love imagining that Amy and Tina are best friends, and that they are a kind of 21st-century Mary and Rhoda, only they aren’t fictional characters. But the beloved shows of these two very funny women aren’t merely based on the personalities of their stars. It’s good writing that lets Tina Fey and Amy Poehler shine, and Sisters feels underdeveloped. Even the characters aren’t particularly fresh: Fey plays the older sister Kate, a party monster and perpetual screw-up (a personality that is, from what I know, very far from the actual Tina Fey); and Poehler, also playing someone quite different from herself, is the always dependable, competent younger sister Maura.

The film mostly takes place in Orlando, where Kate and Maura return to their childhood home only to find that their parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest, who have far too little screen time) have sold it. The girls are tasked with cleaning out their bedroom (which apparently was once two separate rooms before they knocked down the adjoining wall). Devastated by the news that the house they grew up in will no longer be accessible, Kate and Maura vow to throw one last party and invite all their friends from high school.

Much of the humor focuses on aging and nostalgia. The girls’ room is a virtual time capsule, taking us back to every forgotten pop culture object of the 1980s. You get the feeling that the creators of this (probably with help from the stars) simply wanted an excuse to film all the things they loved as teenagers. There’s a montage of the women reliving their adolescence (the room is pretty great as a shrine to teenage girls circa 1986), but the funniest moment is in the trailer, when Poehler stands against her Xanadu poster with a blow drier pointed at her head to give her the Olivia Newton John flowing-hair effect. 

Even the conversations in this movie are often about the past. This feels like old hat, simply the Tina and Amy version of whatever other recent comedies have focused on characters stuck in their teen years. Comedies right now love critiquing characters who refuse to grow up--at the end, after they’ve basically allowed their characters to be utter children for nearly two hours. Sisters does the same: Kate and Maura cannot get over the past, and it’s pretty clear from their guests that everyone has calcified into some banal generic grown-up version of her or his formerly unique self. (This pro-youth propaganda, I’m sure, isn’t something that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler really wish to perpetuate.)

Sisters is about reconciling one’s youthful energy of the past with one’s tired present defeatism. But none of the guests has the energy to re-conjure the madcap, orgiastic hijinks of their youth. Their friends want a Big Chill-esque chat session, but the ladies are thinking Animal House-style rager. (One of their sleazier friends--played by John Leguizamo--summons his drug dealer, played by John Cena, whose assorted powders and pills, etc. help liven up the proceedings.)

Good party scenes are particularly challenging filmmaking feats. One of the best party scenes occurs in the otherwise overrated Breakfast at Tiffany’s. That sequence bubbles with energy, and Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly, mostly an annoying affectation of a character, crystallizes into something charming and clever in those moments. Valley Girl, a minor 80s classic, has a pretty good extended party scene too, although it’s not quite as well-shaped as the one from Tiffany’s. Both of them feel of their time: we become flies on the wall imbibing the flavor of the 1960s or the 1980s, respectively. These scenes build to something (whether it’s a fight or a kiss or some little bit of slapstick), and in a way those party sequences are like mini-narratives inside a larger story. Sisters is one long party full of comic actors trying very hard to be funny and sometimes succeeding. There’s less shaping and more, “let’s throw this up and see if it sticks.” And there are plenty of sticky things happening in Sisters. You can go whole scenes without laughing, or you might get a solid belly laugh here and there. Perhaps it will depend largely on your mood and your expectations.

This is also the raunchiest collaboration between Fey and Poehler. The guests let their freak flags fly with a little help from cocaine. For some inexplicable reason, director Jason Moore is overly fond one one particularly grating character named Alex (played by current SNL cast member Bobby Moynahan), who screams unfunny jokes at the camera even before he begins inhaling cocaine like it’s air. At different times we see Alex pleasuring himself with food and then later with one of the Vietnamese salon girls that Maura invited to the party. There’s a particularly painful to watch scene involving actor Ike Barinholtz (playing Maura’s love interest), his rectum, and a ballerina music box. Unfortunately, that gag is ruined by the movie trailer, as is the great throwaway line uttered by Tina Fey (to John Cena’s character): “You’re the type of bad-ass that I was susceptible to.” (John Cena, incidentally, may be the breakout star of 2015 what with his surprisingly endearing and very funny performance in Trainwreck and his comic relief here in Sisters.)

Other comic stars tag along for the fun: Maya Rudolph (the foil, a high school rival of Kate’s), Samantha Bee, Kate McKinnon, Rachel Dratch, Britt Lower, and Chris Parnell, to name a few. But comedy can’t be forced. Sisters feels like the cinematic equivalent of constipation: the whole movie is exhausted and red-faced. And it may be better if you lower your expectations.

Inherent Vice

A tagline for Thomas Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice theorizes, “if you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there.” That’s the project of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation: to dramatize the disembodied, drug-addled incoherence of an entire decade. The film takes place in 1970, and its star, Joaquin Phoenix, plays a private investigator named Doc Sportello (no stranger to recreational drug use himself). Doc is hired by his ex-girlfriend to check out her wealthy current lover’s wife, who may be plotting against him with her boyfriend. Doc’s investigation quickly gets derailed by all sorts of problems and strange encounters, and it isn’t long before he’s pitted against a conservative, hippie-despising L.A. detective played by Josh Brolin.

The plot—which is constantly being subordinated by the mood and the tone Anderson has worked so very hard to convey—sounds like a promising film noir, particularly one of the 1970s noirs, such as Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. The Long Goodbye is a cynical revision of the 1940s detective thrillers, showing us a Philip Marlowe who wasn’t the knight in shining armor, unless he was maybe a Don Quixote, oblivious to the reality that he no longer mattered. In a sense, this film may be Paul Thomas Anderson’s attempt to ape the style of Altman. But he isn’t as precise. Perhaps the film is too successful at what it wants to do: Its loose structure will either charm you or put you to sleep. (I fell into the latter category.)

I can only admire the craft and the intentions of a film like Inherent Vice for so long. Once that initial feeling of appreciation faded away, I began to look around the theater, check the time, and wonder how much longer my imprisonment would last. (The film runs two hours and 30 minutes.) But it’s not just the fact that Inherent Vice turns out to be a colossal bore of a movie. It’s also pretty dismally unfunny, and Anderson tries very hard to be funny at times. (There are a few minor laughs, but far too many scenes attempting comedy completely misfire.) Phoenix gets knocked around a good bit, and there are moments of outlandish chaos filtered through the relaxed vibe of people too zonked out on mind-altering dope to actually be as zany as Anderson would like. The director possesses an exuberant love of hippy culture, a culture he clearly aims to defend by showing us the moral decay of its enemies. But, in order to remain true to the overall feeling of Pynchon’s novel (one which I am guessing can be summed up in that earlier quote about not remembering the 1960s), Anderson has to ultimately hold himself a kind of hostage to nonsense. He takes a few cues from The Big Sleep there, because nothing in that movie made much sense either. But damn if it wasn’t entertaining and fun from beginning to end.  

Part of the problem is the film’s tendency to dump information on the viewer while doing so in a lulling sort of way. Characters appear and divulge more and more apparently unimportant information, as none of it ever really adds up. When Doc visits a mental institution—where his ex-girlfriend’s lover has been spirited away by his greedy wife and her boy toy—there’s not a feeling of discovery, of revelation. It’s just one more speed bump on a hazy drug trip. The scenes that Anderson shapes are calculated to appear crazy, weird, and disjointed, but nothing in this movie amounts to anything, and Anderson seems to be defying us to challenge him on this, since aimlessness is his raison d'etre. But who cares if the movie's no good?

I really liked Anderson’s 2007 film There Will Be Blood. I felt admiring of The Master—and more interested in it because it seemed to be about something more than this—but Inherent Vice’s lackadaisical structure just doesn’t work for me. Now, there’s always the possibility that such a structure will appeal to some viewers, especially those who aren’t expecting some kind of rip-roaring pot-boiler ala L.A. Confidential (which is a much more exciting, plot-driven L.A. noir.) Then again, there are loosely structured movies that I really adore, such as Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive. But that film had a mood that was much more effective. It takes place in the perpetual night world of two vampires, and is set to a lot of silky, pulsating rock music. Jarmusch captured a mood with absolute precision. Anderson is going for a similar “nothing-is-happening-everything-is- happening” feel here, but he can’t quite achieve it. Anderson is in many ways a stronger director when his material is about something. He needs an idea to shape that is more concrete than what he gets from Thomas Pynchon. And yet, Inherent Vice has the distinction of being far less self-important than either There Will Be Blood or The Master.

I will say that one day I’d like to revisit Inherent Vice, and see if the movie doesn’t improve with a second viewing, free of the tyranny of expectations. But for now, I’m not only unconvinced, but hugely disappointed in a movie to which I was looking forward for months. (Also, I really hated the narrator's childlike, twangy, fake-serious, extraordinarily grating voice.)

With Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Martin Short, Benicio Del Toro, and Maya Rudolph. Written by the director.

The Way, Way Back

The Way Way Back feels like a missed opportunity at times. It tries to be a profound comedy-drama, but its simple story works against those ambitions, for the better. (Simplicity is so underrated that even the simple movie is trying to complicate itself.) This is an enjoyable comedy-drama that's full of interesting characters, but they never develop beyond the predictable. There's pouty teenager Duncan (Liam James), stuck at a New England beach town with his mother (Toni Collette) and her asinine boyfriend (Steve Carell). Then there's Susanna, a chronically annoyed teenager who lives next door with her mom (played by Allison Janney, who's funny but tries too hard to be endearingly obnoxious) and her little brother, whose lazy eye is a point of amusement for his mother.

The film is about Duncan's finding acceptance. He takes to wandering the town and eventually wanders into a water park run by Sam Rockwell and Maya Rudolph. Rockwell's Owen is a man-child who doesn't take anything seriously. But he tries too hard to be funny, and you feel the effort in every line. (He still manages to be likable much of the time.) Rudolph's part feels under-written. She has what amounts to a glorified cameo, and when she gets annoyed with Owen for being so immature, it's never addressed. She just gets over it and that's that.

I found much of The Way Way Back to be charming and refreshing. The film represents for me a conundrum. It's mostly well-acted, and the cast is appealing, as is the story. (That ending was wonderfully understated and really made up for the stupid water-slide-passing moment.) But I kept wondering why on earth Toni Collete was dating Carell's character--who's such an obvious jerk-- in the first place. She provides some shoddy reasoning: "he said it was too late, we were already in this together." It's the kind of dumb movie-writing that is all to easily relied upon when a writer is running out of credible ideas. With AnnaSophia Robb, Amanda Peet, Rob Corddry, Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, Robert Capron, and River Alexander. Directed and written by Fason and Rash. ★★★

Bridesmaids

As I was sitting in the theater howling at the insanely funny Kristen Wiig in the new comic tour de force Bridesmaids, I started thinking about movies where the main character is an underdog who can do no right, and how movies with such characters tend to milk our sympathy--even subconsciously invoking our self-pity as though pulling the strings of our emotions without our consent. I thought of that poor schmuck in Meet the Parents, and how, by the end of the movie, I wanted him to leave those people behind and never speak to them again. I felt the same way for Kristen Wiig's character, for a while, but the beauty of Bridesmaids is that it doesn't let you completely lapse into a pity party for her character. It's not like the horrendously unfunny You Again, which was pure lazy indulgence. In Bridesmaids we are not just feeling the gut punches to Wiig's character, we're also receiving the pride-diminishing life lesson that, eventually, you have to stop playing the victim and take control of your own life.

Bridesmaids' plot operates in a mostly standard fashion: chronic failure Annie (Wiig) must compete with elegant, snotty, rich Helen (Rose Byrne) as she takes on the duty of being the maid of honor for her best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph). We identify with Annie right away, even though Helen isn't a complete bitch. She's close, but the movie isn't going to let us hate her with impunity.

In fact, the complexity of these women and their relationships is what gives Bridesmaids such personality. Besides that, director Paul Feig doesn't rush the humor. He knows how talented the cast is, and he lets them take time building the jokes to a crescendo. You laugh so much you'll miss half the gags, but what's going on visually is just as funny as what's being said, so you eventually become exhausted because you're laughing so much of the time. Bridesmaids is like a really good mixed drink and a really crude joke combined. The crudeness goes down easier because of the buzz you're feeling--as well as the sweetness, which isn't saccharine but genuine sugar.

I enjoyed the predictable relationship developing between Annie and a likable Irish cop, played by Chris O'Dowd. And Melissa McCarthy stole every scene she was in as the bride's sister-in-law to-be, a plump, plucky, and socially awkward self-made woman whose eccentric personality seems to render her oblivious to the drama that's unfolding between the other women. Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper round out the group of bridesmiads (the first one is a discontented housewife and mother of three, and the second a dreamy-eyed newlywed who's obsessed with Disney World and domestic life).

Wiig's comic timing is impeccable. She reminds me of Tina Fey, but with a dose of Goldie Hawn. She's utterly likable even when she's being stubborn, and her humor is genuine. There's something so natural and unforced about her performance. She seems to be having a wonderful time with Rudolph, who projects her own comic radiance while playing the straight gal. Byrne is wonderful too as the spoiled rich thing with a heart of platinum. With Jon Hamm as Annie's insignificant other and the late Jill Clayburgh as her mom. Written by Annie Mumolo and Kristin Wiig.

Away We Go

I had heard much praise of Sam Mendes's little change of pace, Away We Go, and I wasn't disappointed. It is the story of a couple in their early 30's experiencing the fears and joys of becoming parents for the first time, a change that triggers a deep yearning for roots and some sense of belonging. In a culture of seemingly constant mobility, Away We Go captures the scattered sense of community that so many people have. Amidst their voyage from Arizona to Wisconsin to Montreal to Miami and eventually to her childhood home along the Mississippi River, our weary but persistent heroes (John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph) encounter the struggles of their friends and family, seemingly taking mental notes along the way: of what not to do, what to do better, differently, the same, etc. The little vignettes, divided by location, offer some wonderful performances by such fine character actors as Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels (Krasinki's parents), Allison Janney (Rudolph's outspoken, crazy former boss who enjoys the shock value of her demeanor and calls her own daughter a "dyke"), and a particularly amusing performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal as an old family friend of Krasinki, who is the epitome of the trendy modern-day hippy. I found this movie refreshing in its examination of modern values: it doesn't seem to have an axe to grind, and is instead content to simply let its characters find out things for themselves. ★★½