Scott BresslerA few weeks ago, my colleague and movie editor Cecilia Razak wrote a letter to Paul Rudd admonishing him for wasting his obvious charms and talents in muck like “Over Her Dead Body.” Don’t worry, Ryan Reynolds, your letter is in the mail.
But I’ll leave all the comments about Reynolds’s lazy career choices and willingness to be the best part in crap movies to Cecilia’s letter. Because his new movie “Definitely, Maybe,” although it may be masquerading as a uniform romcom (how I hate the phrase “romcom” and yet love the way it phonetically degrades the effortless dreck most date movies are reduced to these days), is actually a sweet movie. More than that, it’s an interesting movie with engaging, complex characters. And, dash it all, it’s actually romantic to boot. I shouldn’t be surprised. Writer and director Adam Brooks already swept me off my feet with the very modern, and surprisingly masculine, “Wimbledon” starring Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst. And here, instead of the generally vapid Dunst, Brooks matches our lovable hero up with three wonderful actresses. Ryan Reynolds shares the screen with the always lovely Rachel Weisz, the beautiful red-head Isla Fisher and rising star Elizabeth Banks, most famous for small, memorable roles in well-regarded comedies. Each is more attractive and charming than the last, and all serve as more than capable foils for Reynolds and his sarcastic charisma.
Why are there three ladies in this one romantic comedy? For two reasons. First, this movie has a twist (isn’t there always a twist?), but at least this time it’s fairly original. The film starts far after most of the action as Reynolds, tired adman Will Hayes, tells his precocious daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin of “Little Miss Sunshine”) the tale of how he met her mother. I know it sounds more than a little like the show, but “Definitely, Maybe” covers a whole different territory.
That brings us to our second reason that three women get such equal screen time in what seems to be a standard film. This movie is not as blithely optimistic as many romantic comedies tend to be. See, the reason little Maya Hayes wants to know how her mommy met her daddy is that mommy and daddy are at the end of a divorce. Will is trying to reassure her that love does exist, but sometimes it is very complicated and can exist in different ways between different people.
Most of the movie plays in flashback with the identity of the mother always a mystery to Maya and the audience. Will changes names and specifics to protect the innocent and his secret. Banks plays Emily, Will’s college girlfriend who stays behind in Wisconsin when he goes to New York to work for the ’92 Clinton campaign. There he meets Isla Fisher’s April, an apathetic copy girl who mocks Will’s political aspirations. Eventually he tracks down Emily’s old friend Summer, a journalism student played with calculated abandon by Rachel Weisz. Each plays a part in Will’s introduction to the city and eventually becomes a potential mother for Maya, who sporadically pops in to make comments.
A real treat is provided by Kevin Kline who plays Summer’s professor and boyfriend Hampton Roth. This is one of those small roles that great actors like Kline can flourish in, turning Roth into a liberal, libidinous and lazy charmer. He’s the kind of actor that makes everyone in the scene, even the entire movie, just a little better. This works brilliantly for Ryan Reynolds who is able to imbue Will with his personality without turning him into a grown-up “Van Wilder.”
The movie works not because of the light humor or the energetic acting, but because the drama, and romance, is taken seriously and fairly realistically. Sure, “Definitely, Maybe” happens in that fantasy New York where everyone is attractive and clever, but it also has those same melancholy elements that all the great romances do. From “Casablanca” to “Brokeback Mountain,” from “The African Queen” to “When Harry Met Sally,” all great romances include a fair amount of sadness. From the start of “Definitely, Maybe,” the audience knows that the romance the story builds to ultimately doesn’t work out.
While it is not quite of the caliber to join those classics, it is to the credit of Adam Brooks’s direction and the cast’s earnestness that “Definitely, Maybe” keeps our interest and makes us believe in love despite the pitfalls and complications.