Jon Hamm and Tina Fey’s Film Reunion Is Shockingly Dull

Jon Hamm finally found his leading-man groove with last year’s Confess, Fletch, a sharp and sly reboot in which he seamlessly slipped into the role of Gregory Mcdonald’s amateur sleuth. Hamm once again tries his hand at solving a baffling mystery in Maggie Moore(s), a kinda-inspired-by-real-events saga about murder, fraud and betrayal. Alas, his charm—and a reunion with his 30 Rock co-star Tina Fey—can’t salvage a middling caper that’s critically low on comedic or criminal verve. Premiering June 12 in the Spotlight Narrative section of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, it’s a cinematic flatline.

Directed by Hamm’s Mad Men colleague John Slattery, Maggie Moore(s) boasts a Fargo-esque premise, if little of that masterpiece’s spirited idiosyncrasy. In an unnamed desert town that’s as generic as its inhabitants, Jay Moore (Micah Stock) keeps his low-rent sandwich shop afloat by procuring expired meats from convicted sex offender Tommy T (Derek Basco) in exchange for pedophilic pornography.

This is an obvious and risky violation of Jay’s franchise agreement. More pressing still, it’s an arrangement that doesn’t sit kindly with his spouse Maggie (Louisa Krause), who discovers her husband’s illicit material and promptly throws him out of the house and threatens to call the cops. With divorce (if not jail time) looming, Jay is in desperate straits. To sort out his situation, he opts to do the nastiest (and stupidest) thing imaginable: hire a hitman to kill his wife.

Read more at The Daily Beast.