‘Maggie Moore(s)’ Review: Not How To Approach This Story [Tribeca]
Nick Mohammed (left) & Jon Hamm in Maggie Moore(s). Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
There’s a point in the career of a movie star when you see them in a movie and think, “What are they doing here?” That’s happened a lot recently over the last few years with stars like Bruce Willis and, in the case of Maggie Moore(s), Jon Hamm and Tina Fey. The film follows police chief Jordan Sanders (Hamm), a down-on-his-luck single man, taking classes at night. We open at a crime scene where Maggie Moore has been killed. Suddenly, after learning the name of the victim, we get sent back to ten days earlier. As the film (incredibly slowly) progresses, we learn that there are, in fact, two Maggie Moores in this small town (weird, right?), and both of them have been murdered. This isn’t a bad concept by any means, but it’s the way in which the film approaches tackling it that makes it shockingly uninteresting and overlong.
Tina Fey (left) & Jon Hamm in Maggie Moore(s). Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Murder mystery movies can be fun, and in the case of a double murder of two women with the same name in a small town, it’s a premise that feels fresh, not overdone in the past — there’s room to work in originality, and do something new. Unfortunately for Maggie Moore(s), the way the story is approached is quite possibly one of the worst ways to do it, giving us every piece of information from the get-go, on top of adding in side-plots that don’t necessarily contribute to the store. Again, on paper, it’s a good concept, but not like this. Even then, poor execution isn’t the be-all and end-all of the movie, which falls upon its abysmal pacing. By the 40-minute mark of the movie, aside from what happened within the first ~10 minutes, no other developments have been presented. It’s an incredibly slow burn that includes an unnecessary side plot between Hamm and Fey that, aside from a single beat in the final minutes of the film, has no reason to be there.
Technically speaking, not much stands out as particularly good or bad, aside from the abhorrent editing in arguably the most pivotal sequence in the film. Instead of cutting normally or maintaining a continuous “oner,” the film uses “fade to black” between each cut, coming across as if it were edited in iMovie. Fortunately, this isn’t a constant throughout the remainder of the film, — making this more jarring — but that’s not to say that the shots are particularly inventive and well-framed — most of them feel generic and overedited.
The film’s cast does get to have some great moments, with Nick Mohammed (of Ted Lasso) shining comedically. The issue holding them back is that the film doesn’t truly know what genre it wants to land in. Sometimes it’s a murder mystery, sometimes, it’s just a murder movie, and sometimes, it’s a rom-com. This repetitive back-and-forth of tone and structure drags out the pacing, overcomplicating a very straightforward narrative that has too many moving pieces. There’s a good movie somewhere inside the messiness in Maggie Moores(s) — it’s just a shame that that’s not what the final product is. ∎ This Week Media
Maggie Moore(s) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 12.
