Rating: R | Runtime: 99 minutes
Release Date: June 16th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Screen Media Films
Director(s): John Slattery
Writer(s): Paul Bernbaum

She did yell the word “filth.” I heard that.

It opens with a murder. We don’t know who the victim is nor why the killer chases after her onto a motel balcony. We know nothing about anything until a cop comes to tell Police Chief Jordan Sanders (Jon Hamm) the deceased’s name was Maggie Moore (Mary Holland)—a revelation that takes him and his deputy (Nick Mohammed’s Reddy) aback.

Why? Well, that’s when director John Slattery hits rewind to bring Maggie Moore(s) backwards ten days. It’s then that Jay Moore (Micah Stock) got into a criminal pickle with a pedophile (Derek Basco’s Tommy T), a deaf hitman (Happy Anderson’s Kosco), and his wife, another Maggie Moore (Louisa Krause). Suffice it to say, screenwriter Paul Bernbaum delivers two bodies for the price of one to make Sanders wonder if the first Maggie was an accident en route to killing the second or if the second Maggie was a ploy to cover-up the first.

But here’s the thing. We know which it is. The murders aren’t therefore the central intrigue despite being the premise of the entire film. No, the reason we’re made to watch is to discover whether Sanders figures it out. If that sounds counterintuitive to you, know that it feels counterintuitive too. By giving us everything to then force us to watch whether the police are keen enough to crack the case rips every shred of momentum away.

There’s no internal clock because there’s no real threat of hurting anyone that matters … namely because no one else on-screen really does matter. With both Maggies dead by the fifteen-minute mark and both widowers wholly unsympathetic either by guilt or sheer disgust, Sanders and Reddy are it. Maybe they’ll get killed in the line of fire. Maybe they’ll get embarrassed by never solving the case. Or maybe things will be so boring that they’ll think they solved it, never discover they haven’t, and leave us knowing the truth.

The result is a frustrating adventure chock full of comic foibles since Jay is an idiot and his rapport with the conversely calculating Kosco is ripe with effective if misguided humor. Bernbaum decides to inject a romantic interest for Sanders to spice things up via Jay’s neighbor Rita (Tina Fey)—and, admittedly, this subplot is the best part of the entire movie right up until it hits an abrupt wall that clumsily and reductively attempts to mine their broken souls’ psychological baggage while actually just setting up a convoluted climax—but it’s so disparate from the police procedural that it becomes like we’re watching two different films at once.

If not for the first two-thirds of the romance and last third of the mystery (which finally delivers a few surprises at the eleventh hour), I’d say the whole enterprise was a dismal failure and waste of quality talent. Because of them, Maggie Moore(s) scrapes by to merely prove a disappointingly forgettable lark.

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Tina Fey and Jon Hamm in MAGGIE MOORE(S).