Maggie Moore(s)

If reunions are best served for reminiscing about the past, then let’s ignore Maggie Moore(s) and recall Jon Hamm and Tina Fey collaborating on “30 Rock” instead.

As for the former, the latest directorial effort of another former Hamm co-star, John Slattery (“Mad Men”), provides some scattered big laughs, but is more uneven in its effort to juggle disparate tones — unable to decide whether it’s a small-town caper comedy or a romantic drama.

The film opens with the accidental killing of a woman named Maggie Moore, ostensibly by a deaf hitman (Happy Anderson) hired by her husband (Micah Stock), the owner of a fledgling sandwich shop trying to hide some unscrupulous secrets.

Sent to investigate is local police chief Jordan Sanders (Hamm) and his eager deputy (Nick Mohammed), whose probe is thrown off course when another Maggie Moore is murdered only days later, a few miles away.

As he suspects a link, Jordan remains persistent while piecing together clues. “Everything about these two cases is bothersome,” he explains.

Meanwhile, the spotlight shifts to the philandering husband (Christopher Denham) of the second Maggie, before a nosy neighbor (Fey) of the original victim takes the case in a new direction. She’s also drawn to Jordan, as the two navigate their insecurities to spark a romance. But who is hiding what?

An eccentric batch of characters produces some amusing zingers while hardly reaching the Coen brothers level of lunacy and suspense to which the film aspires.

Fey elevates the material — she and Hamm provide a welcome dose of comic energy in their scenes together — yet her talents are mostly squandered in a periphery role.

The twisty screenplay by Paul Bernbaum (Hollywoodland) is structured in such a way that the crime is detailed alongside the investigation, and guilt is never in doubt. That wouldn’t be an issue if it didn’t follow such familiar procedural beats.

Typically, the jokes supplement the murder mystery instead of the other way around. However, in this case, none of the parallel storylines generate much intrigue or incentive for a rooting interest in the film’s parade of creeps and lowlifes.

Tying everything together becomes inevitably awkward as Maggie Moore(s) tries to focus on the living over the dead. Along the way, the film registers as more slight than substantial.

Rated R, 98 minutes.