Maggie's Not Here (2007) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Maggie's Not Here (2007) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Thursday, November 01, 2007 @ 20:08:15 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

Ok, I'll say something right now and get it out of the way. Maggie is a pain in the ass. Why is she a pain in the ass? Because she's got some serious issues and she's making not one but two guys suffer beacuse of it. Basically, she's the kind of a woman who will never do anything but hurt any guy she's with simply because of her issues, so both the guys in this movie would have been better off turning gay and hooking up with each other.

Now why do I say this? Well, I guess because I've been hurt by women with issues several times in my life, and also because I really feel zero sympathy for women like this because of my past experiences. But then, you don't know what I'm talking about now do you? Ok, I'll explain...

Maggie's Not Here is the story of a woman named Maggie who works in a bookstore on or near a college campus. She has a boyfriend in his later 30's who loves her, but she can't have sex with him because she experiences a lot of physical pain when she does. Sucks to be him right? I'm sure all you guys out there would sympathize. Then there's this other guy who's like 22 years old who comes into the book store and she ends up cheating on her boyfriend with the young guy. They have sex and she's fine. She even enjoys it, even though no one in this movie seems to know anything but the missionary position.

Ok, so things progress, her boyfriend finds out about the younger guy, and then she leaves him for the younger guy. Unfortunately for both guys, as soon as she does that, she starts experiencing the same pain during sex as she had with the older boyfriend. So it's not anything physical, it's her own mental issues causing the pain when she's actually in a relationship with someone. See why I said the guys would be better off with each other? This is the kind of a woman you run screaming from and never look back.

Ok, now that I've had my little personal rant about someone who's nothing more than a character in a movie, let's talk about the movie itself.

While I found the content of the story irritating on a personal level, the story itself was well written and well told. The acting was good, although I felt the pacing of the editing was a bit strange and at times sort of walked on the acting a bit, if that makes sense. Technically though, the film was well shot, the lighting was great, the sound was good and the music...let me just mention the music here for a moment.

This film had original music, as many films do. The way it was utilized in this film however was quite subtle. It generally was rather quiet and subdued and honestly there were moments when I almost didn't realize it was there, but then also realized how much it added in its own subtle way during those quieter moments. The sound design in this film was also quite good. It was raining much of the time and the rain and thunder that was added in were at a perfect level and sounded just amazing.

All around this is a quality film, and director Justin Lerner as well as his cast and crew all have a lot to be proud of.

If you'd like to find out more about this film, you can check out the Twelve 34 Films website at http://www.twelve34.com.