It feels unfair to compare a movie that's as undeniably good as Maggie's Plan to lesser contemporaries, but it's hard not to see it as a corrective to so many other failed relationship comedies set in academia. Finally, here's one that's as funny as it is clever, that depicts pompous characters without itself being pompous. It's the perfect movie for anyone who appreciates Woody Allen's wit and intellectual dialogue, but always dreamed of pairing them with self-awareness and realistic women.
Greta Gerwig, who's so irresistible at playing such similar kinds of characters that I like to think of her as Lady Jack Nicholson for NPR listeners, plays Maggie, who works at New York University, where her job involves "being a bridge between art and commerce." On the cusp of undergoing artificial insemination, she meets John Harding (Ethan Hawke), the "bad boy of ficto-critical anthropology" and "a real panty melter," according to Maggie's friend (Maya Rudolph).