Maggie's Plan

First Hit:  Oddly interesting story about love, marriage and life through three very different personalities.

The three are Georgette (Julianne Moore), her husband John (Ethan Hawke) and Maggie (Greta Gerwig).

Georgette is a precise, egocentric professor that is focused on her career. She works at a prestigious university (Columbia) and her career path is to be well known and a department head. She has two children with John and abdicates most household care to him.

John works as a part time professor at a lesser college while also working on a novel. He’s famous for some of his anthropological work, but his heart is on writing a novel. On the campus he teaches, he meets fellow professor Maggie who believes she can only have relationships that last 6 months.

Because she wants children, she decides to get pregnant by asking a friend (mathematician) to give her his sperm that she can insert. However, she engages John in conversations and begins to give the attention he’s not getting at home. The relationship starts with John giving her sections of his book to review and ends in a marriage. However, things go array, the relationship changes and realizing that there needs to be a change she creates "Maggie’s Plan".

Moore is very solid as the precise, smart and career focused Georgette. Hawke is very good as the guy who continues to succumb to an illusion of what he wants and what love is. Gerwig is great as the main character who has a clear idea of what she wants and how to get it. Travis Fimmel and Maya Rudolph are very good as friends of Maggie. Rebecca Miller wrote and directed this quirky independent film in a sure handed way.

Overall:  I enjoyed the way this film played out.

Friends with Kids

First Hit:  At times meaningful and insightful while at other times, crass, long, and uninteresting.

There are moments in the film where tears flowed, other times where I cringed with disgust, and other times I was waiting for the next scene.

Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) is best friends with Jason (Adam Scott). They live in the same building and have known each other since college when they dated briefly. Both in their late 20’s they have relied on each other for everything but mostly for their deep friendship and funny interesting conversations.

They have other college friends (couples) who have married and have children. When they see their friend’s lives, they cringe with sadness. Ben and Missy (played by Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig respectively), are filled with desire for wild sex with each other and they do so in anyplace they can find. But when a baby comes it all changes.

Scenes with them as they begin to ignore and ridicule each other are very sad and directly reflective of what happens to a couple when they substitute living with alcohol. The other couple Leslie and Alex (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd respectively) have a child, have gotten out of shape, and their house is a chaotic mess.

There forms of communication are yelling, ignoring, and nagging at each other but you have a sense there is something there, a staying power in their relationship. Julie and Jason want to have a child and decide that they will have a child together, not be married and have their vaunted sex and social life outside of their equally split job of raising their child.

At first it is very idyllic and it works. After they get a great start in raising their baby, they each find other romantic partners. The film then becomes less of a comedy and more about digging deeper into what love really is. This movie has great lines and overly crass lines.

A point of context is; at the defining moment of Jason and Julie’s relationship (at the very end of the movie) he wants to prove something and the way the script is written it felt crass and not about love.

Westfeldt, didn’t do it for me as the female character. There seemed to be something missing from her being fully the character and maybe it was because she wrote the script and also attempted to direct herself. As script writer I thought much of the swearing was more than needed - it didn’t make the movie more hip. However, some of the dinner scenes had great dialogue. As a director, there were times the film was very lost - looking for a path and other times it was on target. Again, the dinner scenes with all the couples in attendance were the best things she shot. Scott was much better in his role and seemed fully engaged in his part. His shallowness was perfect as well as the depth-ness he expressed as he realized what was important to him. He carried these feelings with equal clarity. Hamm was best as the sarcastic drunk while Wiig was very good as the woman who found herself in a hopeless relationship and was deciding to drown herself in wine. Rudolph was intense and occasionally wise and really displayed the kind of irritation one can get when their overwhelmed with parenthood. O’Dowd was good as the husband who was taking things in stride and also giving up on having a life he once knew.

Overall: An OK film, something to watch on video when you want some entertainment.

Bridesmaids

First Hit: A few good laughs lying on pointless dialogue while being nudged by gross behavior for effects.

The first thing that stuck me about this film was that the only character that I felt was honest and worth connecting with was a male.

Now maybe this is because I’m male, but even my girlfriend said the same thing unprompted. Rhodes (played by Chris O’Dowd), playing a police officer, was kind and centered. In fact he was the only kind centered character in the film (outside of the guy who fixes Annie’s car).

Everyone else was either unlikeable or someone who was difficult to relate to. Annie, (played by Kristen Wiig) is having a tough time in her life. She lives with two Australian siblings who have little or no touch to reality (“At first I thought your diary was a handwritten novel” – are you kidding, no one is that stupid).

Annie works in a jewelry store as a clerk, but her sarcastic attitude scotches every sale. Her car is beat up, missing two working tail lights, and is run down. She once owned a bakery but it failed and we don’t know why. “And hell will freeze over before” she moves in with her mom (we never know why). And on top of this she sleeps with a creep who uses her for sex, she knows it, and doesn’t bother to hide that this disappoints her yet she still sleeps with him whenever he calls (she’s his “Number 3”).

This film makes the mistake most films Judd Apatow makes, no real character mining. Nothing to get me engaged in who the people on the screen are. It is almost like he says; “throw a bunch of shit on the wall to see what sticks.” I didn't care about Annie. I almost couldn’t care about her best friend Lillian (played by Maya Rudolph) because she knew damn well what she was doing by playing Annie off of Helen (played by Rose Byrne) but Lillian was, overall, a sweet character.

The other Bridesmaids where caricatures of people we may or may not know. There was no development of any one of them except Megan (played by Melissa McCarthy) who was one of the grossest characters in the film. Lastly this thing was over two hours long and it needed to be edited by at least 30 minutes.

I know that they team that put this together had a whole listing of jokes and skits they wanted to put in this film to make it funny, but someone forgot the pruning shears.

Wiig couldn’t and didn’t create a character worth caring about. She was playing a role and didn’t let her intelligence see that she needed to develop and sell the audience on someone worth watching. She failed in this task miserably. O’Dowd was perfect in his part and created the only sensible person in the film. He was good. Rudolph was OK, but this role was one she could do in her sleep. There was nothing here to really care about because it wasn’t believable that she was so easily pulled away by Helen’s obvious trivial pursuit. If her life-long friendship with Annie was real, she wouldn’t have acted this way. Byrne was OK as the snotty, have too much money and time, bitch that needed to be the center of attention. However, “so what”? I couldn’t care less about why she was the way she was. Her big scene to lay it all out was un-evolving and uninspiring. McCarthy was simply gross in her character and unbelievable in role, however she did attempt to create a moment of caring when she goes to Annie’s house to try to get her out of her doldrums. Wiig and Annie Mumolo wrote this wasteful script. Paul Feig directed this and needed to toe the line about how much garbage went into this film.

Overall: Not worth seeing this at any point in time – it’s just a bad film.

Away We Go

First Hit: Although it is branded a comedy, and it is at times very funny, this film has a powerful point to make about families and home.

The couple, Verona (played by Maya Rudolph) and Burt (played by John Krasinski), are in their thirties and she is pregnant with their baby.

He has a job which is not fully vetted to the audience but you know enough to understand that he can do his job anywhere. He is smart on some levels and clueless on others. She is strong, smart and wondering where they will put roots down as they begin parenthood.

They are living in a rundown home and shortly after the film begins they head to his parents home for dinner. During this dinner, his parents inform them that they won’t be around for their new baby as they are leaving for Europe for a couple of years.

This distresses Verona because her parents are dead and she was looking for a sense of having family around for the baby. With this news they realize they can live anywhere and make plans to visit friends and other family in different parts of the US and Canada.

The remainder of this film is about that journey, what they learn about themselves, the various ways people and families live, and what is important to them. On this journey they find their hearts' answers. 

Sam Mendes superbly directs this wonderfully written film. All the characters are vivid and are given room to breathe. Although many of the family situations presented in the film might be enhanced, they drive home the point of how some families’ parent and love. Both Rudolph and Krasinski are insightful and believable in their characters and as a couple; they are perfect in matching their energies’ and different personalities.

Overall: This film sucked me right in and at the end, I simply said to myself and partner “beautiful”.