Mystery Watch: Maggie Moore[s] (2023)

Watched:  01/12/2023

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Slattery

Selection:  Consensus selection - me, Jamie, Dug

I was curious about Maggie Moore[s] (2003) when I saw the trailer in mid 2023.  Sure, it looked like it had a decent comedy set-up and I like a good crime movie, but it also had John Hamm, Nick Mohammed and Tina Fey.   And I figured they wouldn't jump at a bad script and they're three folks I like in general.  Throw in John Slattery giving it a go behind the camera and I put it on the list of things to see.

Unavoidably, one has to ponder how this movie really wants to be Fargo.  Which would be less of a deal - Fargo was 25+ years ago - if we weren't on Season 5 of Noah Hawley's Fargo show on FX.   We have inept criminals who got into crimes because of their incompetence in life, and a stone-cold killer amongst them.  There's a morally centered cop with a less competent colleague, and the promise this is based on real-life events.

But, yeah, beyond that, it does deliver on the promise of the casting and folks generally being a good group with whom to spend time. 

The basic plot is that a sandwich shop owner (Micah Stock) is not doing great, and through a series of circumstances is wrapped up with a very dumb and very bad guy (Derek Basco), and needs to scare his wife to keep her from going to the cops.  The very dumb guy sets him up with someone to scare his wife, a deaf psycho (Happy Anderson), but things go awry and he kills her.  

To cover it up and confuse the issue, he comes up with the idea to have the same guy bump off another Maggie Moore in town (the "that lady!" actress Mary Holland).  With two dead Maggie Moore(s), the Sheriff (John Hamm) and his un-trusty sidekick (Mohammed) look into both murders.  Fey plays the neighbor of Maggie Moore #1 who heard the argument that spawned the need to scare her.  

There's a secondary plot about Hamm and Fey circling each other as romantic possibilities, and it's the heart of the film, really.  Hamm has been widowed for a year, and Fey divorced for a bit.  Hamm is maybe ready to move on, but guarded, and Fey is so used to being a doormat, she's unsure what to do with the Sheriff who wants her to show some assertiveness.  

None of this sounds particularly hilarious, and the fact is, the actors' natural charm does a lot of heavy lifting.  I do think it's a little dicey to just say "Fargo!" off the bat.  Comedy crime is it's own little sub-sub-niche.  And from the perspective of crime-comedy, I think it does okay.  I saw reviews saying "it's not a yuck every ten seconds" which it is not trying to be, but it is also not trying to be a Poirot mystery to untangle.  And I'm not sure if putting either "crime movie" or "silly comedy" rubrics over the thing is particularly helpful.  But for what it is, it's mostly there.  

Hamm is such an interesting talent.  He got to showcase a career's worth of range in just Mad Men, and has bounced around ever since, from silly comedies to dark crime stuff.  As he's starring in Season 5 of Fargo right now, you can see him doing a particularly terrifying character, and then flip over to this movie and see him as a sweet natured guy who still has a burden.  Fey can be hilarious, but I'd not seen her wrangle a character quite like this before.  She's good!  

Slattery doesn't really do anything particularly new as a director - he's not trying to put a stamp on the movie visually or anything, but he does handle the material and working with actors very well. which may be more than you can say for most modern directors.  This movies could have been a flat disaster with a script that was underserved, and I never felt that was the case.  Is it a classic?  I mean, it's probably a decent one-time watch to just see what they did.  

 Like Fargo, it drifts between comedy and tragedy, not quite settling on one thing.  And that's not limited to the crime story, but to the romantic subplot.  That's hard to do - as folks now like to say movies have "uneven tone" or whatever.  But Slattery really handles that well, as well as keeping the twists in the movie understated, which makes them even funnier, imho.

I wouldn't be shocked if I watched it again if it drifted by on cable, especially now that I know how it all pieces together, which I think is a kinder take than the critics took upon the movie's release.