Rumors of Maggie Moore(s) being a Fargo knock-off are not greatly exaggerated. My immediate feeling when the movie launched was just that… and it’s far from a perfect film to boot. It has issues but I enjoyed enough of it to give it a bit of a pass.

The film stars John Hamm as a local cop investigating the murder of Maggie Moore. Things aren’t adding up when another Maggie Moore shows up dead. He is also awkwardly dating one of the Maggie Moore’s neighbors as played by Tina Fey. Also, Dark Nate (the Wonderkid) from Ted Lasso plays a clueless, wisecracking deputy.

This film has a lot of shaggy bits that don’t seem to relate to the main mystery. Or, perhaps they relate and I’m missing the connection. But it almost doesn’t matter since Fey and Hamm have such great chemistry and their dialog is witty and fun. You could even get rid of the murder investigation and have an enjoyable rom-com if they wanted to avoid that whole Fargo thing.

But they stuck with the investigation and it only hurts their efforts when Fargo is so much better. But that still leaves a decent watch with some pretty good bad guys, some witty dialog, some other dialog that tries too hard, and overall a decent, twisty plot. It never exactly has a legs-in-a-wood-chipper (or Marge Gunderson) moment though. It’s just doesn’t have enough original ideas.

Tina Fey is always great even when she’s relegated to the quirky girlfriend role. And John Hamm isn’t exactly working his acting muscles, but he delivers his usual charm.

Maggie Moore(s) is a pretty good time… unless you just can’t get over the whole Fargo thing. But there are worse movie sins than that so I say give it a look if it interests you.

Score: 77