“Some of this actually happened,” we are advised at the beginning of John Slattery’s second feature, “Maggie Moore(s).” At least it’s a variation on the groaningly familiar “based on a true story,” even if both claims are equally meaningless.
Degree of truth aside, this comedy-thriller succeeds as neither. Top-heavy with big names (Tina Fey, Jon Hamm) and set in a nondescript small town populated primarily by sad sacks and losers, the movie struggles to get out of second gear. A terrified woman flees a hulking hit man, her body later discovered by a police chief named Sanders (a hammy Hamm) and his pragmatic deputy (Nick Mohammed). Days earlier, another woman had been found, burned to a crisp in her car. Two murdered women, two sketchy spouses, one shared name: Maggie Moore.
Suspicions aroused, Sanders begins a desultory investigation. Distracted by the recent death of his wife — whose loss he medicates by reading his sappy scribblings aloud to a rapt writing group — Sanders seems drained and becalmed. Any plot momentum, then, is due solely to Micah Stock and Christopher Denham’s heroic efforts as the weaselly husbands of the murdered Maggies, though their comedic vigor is undercut by the sheer bleakness of Paul Bernbaum’s script. Desperately unhappy people are rarely a laugh a minute.
Or, for that matter, convincing lovers. So when Sanders sidles into a relationship with Rita (Fey), a chatty casino employee, their scenes are never believable as anything other than Hamm and Fey doing a particularly boring bit.
“I’m trying to be a little more spontaneous these days,” Sanders confesses to Rita at one point. “I hear the ladies really like that.”
With dialogue this dreadful, even Jon Hamm would struggle to score.
Maggie Moore(s)
Rated R for inappropriate language, unsavory behavior and unconvincing sex. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.
