Audio By Carbonatix
Sandwiched somewhere between the American Spirit commercials and the Clinton campaigning that make up Definitely, Maybe is a surprisingly rewarding romantic comedy. Imagine, really, old-school Woody Allen starring that shit-eating smirker from Van Wilder, Ryan Reynolds. If this isn’t exactly Annie Hall or Manhattan, the mere fact it aspires to those heights is worth a celebration of some kind. The film is told almost entirely in flashback, as ad-man Will (Reynolds) recounts for his daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) the story of how he met his now-ex-wife and Maya’s mother — who might either be his Wisconsin college girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks), the Xerox girl in Bill Clinton’s ’92 New York campaign HQ (Isla Fisher), or the would-be writer (Rachel Weisz) shacked up with a cranky prof (Kevin Kline). Over the course of a couple of hours, Will and these three bright, beautiful women keep crossing paths — as lovers, as disappointments, as what-coulda-beens, as what-might-bes. Writer-director Adam Brooks, whose French Kiss screenplay was as tony and old-fashioned a romance as Hollywood has made in 20 years, grounds the movie in the up-and-down everyday. As sweet and silly as the film can get, it ultimately just shrugs and says, “Do your best, expect the worst, and you’ll muddle through.” Which seems awfully … revolutionary?
