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Slightly, possibly>> Romcom Definitely, Maybe |
 BEDTIME STORY: Ryan Reynolds and Isla Fisher
by MARK SLUTSKY Working Title Films is the U.K. production company that made its name on the Hugh Grant-powered Brit romcoms of the ’90s and early ’00s. Their last big effort at the genre was Love Actually and their newest is Definitely, Maybe; eventually these dudes will start calling their films things like Suddenly Totally and Absolutely Certainly.They’re striking out in a different direction on this one, a Grant-free film set in New York and featuring almost entirely American characters. Ryan Reynolds plays ad exec Will Hayes, divorced dad to adorable daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin, who’s sweet enough to keep her character from being overwhelmingly precocious). One fine day, Breslin insists her dad tell her the story of how he and her mom met, and so begins a very long bedtime story flashback recounting Reynolds’ various amours, as Breslin tries to figure out which one is her mom. (Why she seems to know so little about the basic details of her own mother’s life is never explained.) The story begins in the early ’90s as Reynolds starts out in New York as a volunteer on the Clinton campaign (this is an unabashedly Democratic movie). As his career and life takes its twists and turns, he meets and variously woos the likes of Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz and Elizabeth Banks, and Breslin frequently interrupts the story to muse on her possible parentage. It’s basically The Princess Bride, with Breslin as Fred Savage and Ryan Reynolds as Peter Falk. Except, I have seen quite a few Peter Falk performances, and Ryan Reynolds, I’m sorry to say, is no Peter Falk. Nor is he Hugh Grant, for that matter. Look, he’s a perfectly likeable actor, but I’m not sure he brings the right type of neurotic vulnerability that makes a good romcom hero. Because this is also When Harry Met Sally, as the movie makes clear from the beginning, and unlike Billy Crystal’s slightly gross grape-eating Harry, Reynolds is a little too squeaky clean to really feel for him. Romcom protagonists need to have a little bit of the loveable loser in them; they need to be more Jack Lemmon in The Apartment and less Van Wilder in Van Wilder. While the film has its charms (namely Fisher and Weisz), it doesn’t quite connect.
Definitely, Maybe opens |
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