"Hawke and Gerwig own the screen in the latest rom-com"

Award winning Writer/ Director Rebecca Miller brings us a rather nifty little comedy which is sure to win over every Woody Allen loving cinema goers’ heart within the first few scenes. In fact, it is almost as if, Miller had accidentally stumbled upon a half finished Allen flick and infused it with Wes Anderson’s quirky yet enduringly sweet undertones.

By the by, nothing can take the power away from Miller here as we are introduced to a hippie teacher Maggie (Greta Gerwig), who desperately wants to have a baby and has chosen to inseminate herself with old school friend Travis’s seed, as falling in love for longer than 6 months is virtually impossible for her. Well, until she meets lecturer, come struggling writer John Harding (Ethan Hawke) that is.

As some of the first few words that come out of Hawke’s Harding’s mouth are ‘Like, is a condom for words’, we know we are in for a treat here. A successfully published research scholar giving language advice to colleagues seems to trap Maggie where she stands and quickly leads to the two sharing lunch together as Maggie delves into the first draft of Harding’s budding novel.

As Harding’s hot headed, talented woman of a wife Georgette, who does work, work and nothing much else, pushes him to breaking point, his first thought is to turn to his new found friend Maggie. It's utterly sickening how this man weasels his way into her life, albeit nothing can stop Maggie having this baby which leads to one of the most hilariously embarrassing meetings in the history of modern cinema.

Maggie’s Plan successfully portrays the adorable and most importantly horrible moments of marital life. Especially marriage that comes with baggage and here, there seems to be a little too much. Alarm bells should have started sounding the moment when the ex-wife moves in with the current wife as they both devote their time to hatching up a plan in the hope to wash all their problems away - wishful thinking. However in the words of Georgette, just tap, tap, tap all your problems away – quite literally! The dry, sarcastic humour is utterly nailed here, if there has to be a flaw with this one, it’s that we saw the twist coming from a mile off, well in fact from the first 10 minutes. Yet, there certainly is something great about being right isn’t there?

These are the unwritten Woody Allen characters that have taken to the silver screen and made us laugh, cry and squire with awkwardness in our seats. Even though this whole situation is so utterly dysfunctional, the warm and fuzzies still emerge as the credits roll – a crowd pleaser, that’s for sure. If this doesn’t have you singing, Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark, then you must have fallen asleep. Oh and don’t forget the pickles!