'Maggie's Plan' a Woody Allen-esque look at absurdity of romance

"Too bad you can't give him back to his ex-wife, eh?" Felicia (Maya Rudolph) says to her friend Maggie (Greta Gerwig) after learning she no longer loves her self-absorbed husband John (Ethan Hawke), a crypto-something anthropologist forever writing an unfinished novel.

In Rebecca Miller's assured fourth feature "Maggie's Plan," escapees from a vintage Woody Allen comedy attest once more to the absurdity of romance and the difficulty of too-educated New Yorkers to tell the difference between what they want and what they need.

At the beginning, single Maggie's determination to become a mom compels her to use a turkey baster filled with a donation from a local pickle entrepreneur and former college chum (Travis Fimmel).

Wait! John, a new adjunct professor at the New College where she works, confesses his love for her and wants to marry her. Except he's already married to Julianne Moore's hilariously control-freakish college professor Georgette, a tightly wound academic with a dangerously Danish accent that could etch glass.

John doesn't like that Georgette won't let him coast on his self-centered ego, forever working on his book. But Maggie knows he'll change when he's with her, right?

Miller, who must always be identified as playwright Arthur Miller's daughter (it's a journalistic rule), extracts just enough humanity from her flawed, myopic characters to keep them on this side of likability.

Gerwig, who rode into movies on the mumblecore wave several years ago, is Miller's Diane Keaton - her characters operate within extremely predictable circles - yet can surprise us with a twist on the dialogue and a subtle reaction.

"Maggie's Plan" moves at a mercifully brisk clip (thanks, editor Sabine Hoffman) with a welcome, clever payoff awaiting at the end.