Definitely Maybe
“I’m gonna tell you the story and I’m not telling you who your mum is, you have to figure that out for yourself. I’m gonna change all of the names and some of the facts…”
This is the way that advertising manager Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) introduces his confused premarital history to his precocious ten-year-old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine), who has come home after a school class on the birds and the bees. And whilst Hayes presents his philanderings in the sweetest way possible, this is definitely no children’s fairy tale. As Maya puts it, “it’s like a love-story-mystery!”, and the poor girl is stuck in the middle, wondering whether she is nothing more than the result of a drunken party.
The story begins in 1992, when a starry-eyed Will moves from Wisconsin to New York to work on the presidential campaign for Bill Clinton. Over the next sixteen years, Will becomes torn between three beautiful, but very different women who drift in and out of his life through a series of bad timings and misunderstandings. Could Maya’s mother be Emily (Elizabeth Hayes), Will’s college sweetheart turned urban sophisticate? Or Summer (Rachel Weisz), the ambitious journalist who is as drawn to Will’s boyish charm as much as she is to the intellectual prowess of the dissolute academic Hampton Roth? Or was Maya born nine months after a passionate night with Will’s best friend April (Isla Fisher), who has problems holding down a job or a man, and always appears on the scene just as Will is about to propose - to someone else. But with Will on the brink of divorce, we know from the beginning that this tale isn’t destined to end happily.
Adam Brooks is the screenwriter behind such bland rom-coms as Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason and Wimbledon, but Definitely Maybe’s deviant formula, along with its racy political sub-plot and depiction of the skittish bustle of New York, may find a following beyond die-hard fans of the genre. The enthusiasm and raw idealism of the young Clintonites is both credible and funny, and it is interesting to observe the way in which some become cynical with age, while others stick to their guns with desperate fervour, viewing Monica Lewinsky as proof of the unstuffy, pioneering spirit of their hero.
But this is Hollywood, and everything is shot through a prism of cloying sentimentality which belies the turbulence of Will’s emotions, and the effect of his inconstancy on the women in his life. The film also suffers from its flawed central plot device: the bed-time story that daddy tells his daughter. While the more lewd details have of course been removed, it’s difficult to imagine any father recounting his messy erotic history to a child, even one who has grown up.
The trouble with the formula of Definitely Maybe is that the three leading ladies have to share the amount of screen time that Will gets to himself. This means their characters are never properly explored; rather they become mere picture hooks on which to hang the canvas of Will’s troubled love life. Of Will’s various amours, only April displays any real pluck, though in the light of her obvious intelligence it’s unclear why she turned out so feckless.
Ryan Reynolds makes an excellent lead, bringing to the screen a rare combination of charm, a gift for comedy and boyish good looks. Kevin Kline, meanwhile, heads a solid cast of secondary characters, and adds a welcome dose of quick-witted cynicism as the eminent professor and self-styled philosopher. Abigail Breslin as Maya applies the same sweetness and naïveté that bagged her an Oscar nomination for Little Miss Sunshine.
Definitely Maybe offers a satisfying dose of modern romance with a political twist.
