Definitely, Maybe

A Review:

Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) works at an ad agency which of course he hates. Will has recently received divorce papers. His only pleasure in life seems to be getting off work early two days a week to pick up his daughter from school. Will arrives at the school on a fateful day where seemingly only for plot purposes the school had given a sex education class to the young students. This causes Will's daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) to start asking questions which Will tries delicately to answer. This leads Will eventually (again for not entirely clear or coherent reasons) to decide to tell his young daughter the details of his three real relationships in all there detail and how he ended up marrying Maya's mother.

The tale circles around three women. Emily (Elizabeth Banks) was Will's college sweetheart, Summer (Rachel Weisz) was his second serious relationship and April (Isla Fisher) was a long term friend who he also fell in love with. The story centers on Will and how all of these women came in and out of his life at various points all to the backdrop of the 1990s including such historically memorable moments as Clinton campaign of '92, the Monica Lewinsky scandal of the late '90s and other similar cultural milestones. This is all intercut with occasional returns to the present for discussion between Will and Maya in which he assures her that she is very important.

Such is the tale of this romantic comedy that is trying to break from the normal format of such films. Admittedly it succeeds in some of these attempts. The relationships and their gritty details all feel genuine especially the breakups which result from a range of betrayals. Each of the women is a fairly well developed character. Each has their charms and their drawbacks and Banks, Weisz and Fisher are all fun to watch on screen. Unfortunately it also fails on a number of fronts. The most glaring of which is that either because he is incapable of doing so or because of misdirection or miscalculation Ryan Reynolds just doesn't work. His defining quality seems to be blandness not exactly a quality that earns you a beautiful woman, let alone three.

It certainly should earn some props for dealing more realistically with divorce, sex and relationships than most but it all hinges on a very shaky premise. The idea that Will would tell this story mostly unedited to his young daughter. And honestly Breslin's preternaturally astute Maya was a bit annoying. She barely acts like a kid at all and somehow manages to root for a reunion with her parents and at the same time root for his success with an old love who isn't her mother.

I would like to make special mention of the always lively Isla Fisher. She radiates a certain amount of charm and likability that had me smiling and enamored any time she was on screen and she even did a respectable job with the few more dramatic moments they gave her. Rachel Weisz also did a rather admirable job balancing a character who was both ambitious and yet seemed to genuinely care for Will. Elizabeth Banks was perhaps the least developed of the three but she did well with what she was given. Ultimatly the film shines best and brightest when the loves of Will's life are on screen.

I'd like to recommend this movie as a sort of innocent fluff work that is enjoyable and mindless. Sadly what it has to recommend itself is outweighed by what irritated me about it. In fact that last act which traditionally is when we are rooting for the happy reunion of the couple I was irritated by its seemingly lazy chain of coincidences that wrapped up story line after story line. Did the writer use up all his creativity in the first two acts? Was this film much longer and had to be cut down? I couldn't even work up enough to care how it ended. Which I say is pretty damning for a romantic comedy.

Cordially, Rory

A Response:

Rory, I think we're in agreement on a lot of things about this one. The three female leads are all solid but Isla Fisher as April steals the show. I feared she was an actress who would never branch out from the type of role we saw her playing in Wedding Crashers but she comes alive in this one. It's a personal bias, naturally, but I liked her the moment she turns up wearing a Smiths tee shirt and downplaying all of Will's beliefs and by the time we see her smoking, well, I was gone with Isla. I was rooting for her to win the whole way.

I also liked Kevin Kline as hard-drinking, constantly-babbling author Hampton Roth. I honestly didn't even realize it was Kline when he answered the door. It took me a minute or two to pick up on it.

Romantic comedies also tend to bridge the Meet Cute to Being in Love via a single scene or, God help us, nothing beyond a montage but this film spreads itself out over several years and by doing so all the relationships between Will and the three loves of his life progress so much more realistically. Also, massive bonus points for understanding that divorce does not automatically mean an ending cannot be happy. There is that line near the conclusion that Will says to his daughter was corny but I still kinda' liked it.

You're absolutely correct, though, Rory in that Reynolds lead performance is the fatal flaw. This guy brings no weight to the table, no gravitas. He's just so blah. His inability to convince makes all the good stuff around him a little less convincing as well. Why are all these beautiful, cool women so in love with him? Do you agree that Derek Luke, saddled with the Best Friend role, would have been a better choice for Will?

One other thing I particularly found irritating was the need to include all sorts of "humorous" 90's trivia. You know, at one point Will has a "humorously" large cellphone and the internet is at one point "hilariously" seen running very slow and the film even works in a clip of a young George W. Bush. Seriously? They had to play that card? I don't like George W, either, but the forced reference to his idiocy had no place here. Leave that crap to Michael Moore.

And Abigail Breslin as Maya seemed to work as the surrogate for the screenwriter. She was spouting the romantic comedy formula out loud and maybe the writer's intention was to cut the formula off at the pass by doing so but I regret to say the formula still slipped through said pass. Nice try. It might have been a better idea to forgo the flashback structure. Sometimes you need to let the audience realize developments on their own without one of the characters announcing all the lessons we're supposed to be learning out loud.

Romantic comedies tend to be either formulaic or ambitious, though even if it does possess ambition it will usually contain some of the formula as well. Definitely, Maybe has a lot of formula, yes, but a nice supply of ambition to contradict it. That's why you could do better than this movie if you're looking for a romantic comedy, but you could do a whole lot worse. What might have been if they looked a little longer for a lead actor?

Best Regards,
Nick

Yes, I agree Derek Luke was much more interesting than Ryan Reynolds. I guess if you absolutely need to see a Romantic Comedy then this one won't have you gouging out your eyes and tearing out your hair. But it was still on the whole disappointing. I think a better lead might have saved it from most of my complaints. I suspect the whole use of the 90s as backdrop to the story had some deeper symbolic meaning but I just didn't care and yes the cutesy additions of 90s memorabilia was quite annoying.

Until Next Time,
Rory