MILLERS IN MARRIAGE | ©2025 Paramount/Republic Pictures

Rating: R
Stars: Morena Baccarin, Benjamin Bratt, Edward Burns, Brian d’Arcy James, Minnie Driver, Julianna Margulies, Gretchen Mol, Campbell Scott, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, Erica Hernandez, Patrick Wilson
Writer: Edward Burns
Director: Edward Burns
Distributor: Paramount/Republic Pictures
Release Date: February 21, 2025

Director/writer Edward Burns specializes in movies and TV series in lightly humorous dramas set in New Jersey and New York.

Burns’s latest, MILLERS IN MARRIAGE, was shot in New Jersey. Its principal setting is perhaps there or another leafy, upscale community accessible by car and train a few hours out of Manhattan, with large, two-story homes that have enough greenery around to provide distance from neighbors.

MILLERS IN MARRIAGE concerns the middle-aged Miller siblings, Maggie (Julianna Margulies), Andy (Edward Burns), and Eve (Gretchen Mol). Maggie and Eve are both in longtime marriages, each with two children who are out of the next. Andy is separated from his wife Tina (Morena Baccarin).

Maggie is a successful fiction author, whose husband Nick (Campbell Scott) has been an even more successful author. But Nick has been struggling with writer’s block for a while now and resents Maggie’s prolific output.

Eve was once a promising singer/songwriter who gave it all up when she became pregnant by and then married her band manager Scott (Patrick Wilson). Scott has remained in his profession and is doing very well, despite a severe drinking problem.

Andy is now involved with Renee (Minnie Driver), a former acquaintance of Tina. When Tina finds out, she is furious. Tina also declares that, even though she left the marriage in the first place, she wants Andy back.

Moving around the perimeter are music journalist Johnny (Benjamin Bratt) and property caretaker Dennis (Brian D’Arcy James).

Those are a lot of high-quality actors playing characters who generate enough micro-aggressive soap to keep us generally engaged for about two hours. In a bit of meta commentary, Nick says his own and Maggie’s writing involves “rich people with champagne problems,” which somewhat describes MILLERS IN MARRIAGE. No one here has WOLF OF WALL STREET wealth, but neither are any of their decisions based on financial issues.

Mol’s Eve has the most familiar sort of arc, but she is also the character most open to possibilities. Mol is endearing. Wilson plays Eve’s husband Scott as a man with no visible redeeming qualities, but perhaps that’s the point.

Margulies and Scott are beautifully matched as the long-married Maggie and Nick. The interaction between them has the kind of nuance and detail that plays through both dialogue and silences. Scott has an extraordinary grip on the kind of patrician intellectual with a specific vision of what his world should be like, even though he feels he’s failing to do his part in upholding it. Margulies has the quiet poise of a woman who is accustomed to juggling a lot of moving pieces but doesn’t expect or want anything to be too demanding.

The romantic triangle of Andy, Renee and Tina isn’t as clearly delineated as the other relationships. None of them appear especially engaged by work or anything else in their lives, but they’re lively enough as company.

MILLERS IN MARRIAGE has some aspects that are better than others, but its assets are very good indeed. As familial/romantic dramedies go, it mostly fulfills its aims well.

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