BEFORE: Well, it seems that public opinion is in, events and film festivals are being cancelled all over the place - down goes SXSW, down goes WonderCon, and images are pouring in from Europe where all the crowded tourist areas look like ghost towns. It seems the best way to combat a viral outbreak is with something called "social distancing", where people don't go out much, avoid crowded areas, and limit human contact. Jeez, it turns out that without realizing it, I've been practicing for this for years. I only go to Comic-cons now when I have to work there, I only go to the movies when a Marvel or Star Wars film gets released, and I've slowly been alienating the majority of my friends and family members. I've got a new movie every night, nothing on my social calendar until we go to Atlantic City, and I'm stocked up on snack foods and beer. Except for work, I'm happy to stay in until April.
Ryan Reynolds carries over from "The Proposal". Which Ryan Reynolds romance film will advance to the Elite 8 in the March Marriage Madness Tournament?
THE PLOT: A political consultant tries to explain his impending divorce and past relationships to his 11-year-old daughter.
AFTER: Honestly, I wasn't looking forward to this one, because the premise seemed very stupid - it seemed like "How I Met Your Mother", only worse. In that sit-com, I think the father was in the future, telling the story set in the past (our present?) to his children and his wife was deceased (I don't know for sure, I never watched that show...). This movie seemed to employ a similar mostly-flashback story, only I wondered, how does his daughter NOT know anything about her mother? Has this single father somehow been keeping this information about her mother from her? That doesn't seem right, everyone should know about their parentage if possible, plus hasn't the girl been at least curious over the last decade to know who her mother is? And she can't be deceased here, because the in the first scene Ryan Reynold's character gets his divorce papers at his office, so if his wife was dead then there would be no reason to divorce her. Things just didn't seem to add up, but again, this was BEFORE watching the film.
The real storyline is not that bad - political wonk Will Hayes relates this story about the three women he dated to his daughter and she KNOWS her mother in real life, only he changes all the names in his story so she can't tell at first which one turns out to be her. OK, that explains some of the situation, but it's still weird - nobody would tell their life story to their daughter and change all the details just to preserve a little bit of mystery. What was the point he was trying to make, that all women are (more or less) interchangeable? That he bounced between relationships for about a decade before he could decide on one person to spend his life with? That some people are destined to "play the field" a bit before settling down? Well, yes, apparently his daughter has just been through her first sex education class, and she doesn't quite get the distinction between "practice" non-commitment sex and relationship sex. So maybe he feels the need to explain to the daughter why he was such a man-slut? Nah, it's still a bit odd.
Will's story flashes back to before the 1992 election, when he was a young intern volunteering for future President Bill Clinton and working the NYC campaign office, leaving his girlfriend Emily back in Wisconsin. At the campaign office he becomes friends with April, the girl who makes copies, and later he meets Summer, a journalist who was Emily's old roommate. For the next few years he works on several campaigns and bounces between all three women (Emily finally moves to NY) and we follow the various Clinton scandals in the background. This turned out to be quite timely, remember when we had a President who secretly fooled around with many women and then got impeached, but not removed from office? Good times...
You can play along and try to guess which one of the three women ultimately became Will's wife, the story bounces between them so liberally that it could be any of them. The weirder question, though, is what was up with that author character played by Kevin Kline? Was he just there as a foil character, somebody who was dating Summer to make her unavailable when the plot needed her to be? Or was this supposed to represent a real-life author? He just seemed so specifically odd that I wonder if his character was a thinly-veiled reference to somebody famous.
NITPICK POINT - much is made of Will finding the "perfect song" to listen to on such a fine, fine morning at the start of the film. Again, this is the morning he received his divorce papers, but he's happy that it's also the day he gets to pick up his daughter from school. OK, but how is "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone the "perfect song" for either occasion? It doesn't fit with the divorce thing, or the daughter pick-up, so isn't it much more likely to just be the best song that the film's producers could license? Unless it's somehow just generically the "perfect song", which it is not - I've never liked that song. It feels half-written with all the scooby-dooby-dooby stuff, like somebody couldn't be bothered to create a full song's worth of lyrics. Then there's all that stuff about "There is a short one, who doesn't like the fat one" or the "yellow one that doesn't like the blue one". Great, so the song is guilty of both fat-shaming and racism. Plus, there are NO BLUE PEOPLE, so the song is nonsensical at best. Perfect song? I think not.
But hey, I liked this film more than I thought I would, so I think we've got an upset victory over "The Proposal", which I didn't like as much as I predicted. So "Definitely, Maybe" is moving on to the second round of the March Marriage Madness tournament! Yeah, I'll admit it got me in the end with a sentimental ending. Sometimes a sucker-punch ending is also a knockout victory.
Also starring Isla Fisher (last seen in "Tag"), Derek Luke (last seen in "Self/Less"), Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Rachel Weisz (last seen in "The Favourite"), Kevin Kline (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Abigail Breslin (last seen in "No Reservations"), Adam Ferrara, Annie Parisse (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Liane Balaban (last seen in "Last Chance Harvey"), Nestor Serrano (last seen in "The Man"), Marc Bonan (last seen in "Cadillac Records"), Alexie Gilmore (last seen in "Labor Day"), Daniel Eric Gold, with cameos from Kevin Corrigan (last seen in "Winter's Tale"), Sakina Jaffrey (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Robert Klein (also last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), with archive footage of Tom Brokaw (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), George W. Bush (ditto), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain").
RATING: 6 out of 10 copies of "Jane Eyre".
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