Saturday, July 22, 2023

Maggie Moore(s) (2023)



It's probably obvious from the frequency of my blog entries that I didn't have time, and honestly neither much mood for movies lately. I'm considering to compensate a bit more during this summer time, but we'll see... For now I stopped at "Maggie Moore(s)", which I also mentioned in the previews entry a couple of months ago, a title that afterwards received some mediocre ratings on various sites, but which I still decided to watch. And I liked it. Therefore, the current subject.

Probably the best fit for mapping this movie to a genre would be dark comedy, drawing apparently some inspiration from some creepy true events. In the suburbs of some town, some Mr. Moore doesn't get along well with Ms. Maggie Moore, his wife, and Mr. Moore also has some shady relation with an expired foods supplier for his franchise restaurant. When Ms. Moore finds out and threatens to call the police, Mr. Moore decides to hire a local thug to scare her. Unfortunately the scare goes a bit too far and Mr. Moore loses his wife. Through some unfortunate coincidence, Mr. Moore finds out about some other Maggie Moore living in the same area, and an idea pops up... What if, for building a solid alibi as a grieving husband, to hire again the same "assassin" to execute the same scare job on the second Ms. Moore, which would make the first "accident" to really look like an accident with a wrong address. To add more to this plot, the second Ms. Moore proves to be a likely target for some other people, which results in the most complicated case the local police chief ever encountered. Top that with a side romance + a comic relief offered by the bad jokes thrown in by the deputy.

The movie clearly doesn't fit the trend of the last years, and is more likely close to a TV production or to an episode from some crime mystery series. Overall though has some particular charm of a calm story but not a boring one, funny but not childish, "spicy" but not exaggerated. It's a perfectly fine movie if you're looking for one hour and a half of chill time, but still active for your brain, because the script is dense enough and well written. It probably becomes dull for the expectations of the mainstream critics who I guess got used during latest years either with the action box office standard not delivering much substance, or with the range of Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson and others. Something in between... bit more hard to get accepted. For me it seems way too underrated. But, watch it and then judge it... Maybe I'm just tired :)

Rating: 4 out of 5