On Screen
Definitely, Maybe
BY Jason Anderson February 13, 2008 15:02
Despite sharing a title with their first album, there’s nary an Oasis reference in Definitely, Maybe, but the many mentions of Cobain and Clinton are hallmarks of what may be a new genre: the 1990s period piece. It’s also appropriate that this aimless dramedy is so indebted to the screenplays of Richard Curtis and the novels of Nick Hornby, cultural objects that also helped define the zeitgeist… or at least the rom-com as we know it and endure it today.
One of those hesitant, Hornby-an gents who can’t suss out the key to a successful relationship, ad man Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) shares the film’s nostalgia for the recent past. The plot is conveyed nearly entirely in flashback as Will relates his romantic history to his daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin). She has to guess which of the women he describes — college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks), fellow Clinton campaign worker April (Isla Fisher) or journalist Summer (Rachel Weisz) — will turn out to be her mother. It’s like a Maury Povich paternity test except wordier and with no fistfights.
Though director Adam Brooks also wrote the script, he’s less interested in making the frothy comedy that the premise invites than the more downbeat saga of Will’s disillusionment in romance and politics. Yet the movie is too glib and muddled to achieve its loftier goals and ends up seeming over-ambitious and overextended. And if characters really must quote Nirvana lyrics to each other, please let them be from “Negative Creep” and not “Come As You Are.”
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