Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars Ryan Reynolds, Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Banks, Kevin Kline, Abigail Breslin,
Derek Luke, Kevin Corrigan, Nestor Serrano, Daniel Eric Gold, Alexie Gilmore | Written by Adam Brooks
UK certification 12 | UK RRP £15.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 107 minutes | Directed by Adam Brooks
Let's start with the negatives. Definitely, Maybe is too long. And... well, there's... Actually, all its problems pretty much spring from that point. A couple of strands go nowhere and it feels slightly bloated, as if writer/director Brooks is just trying too hard to break the rom com mould. He needn't have bothered. Definitely, Maybe might be a bit of fluff but it's a likeable bit of fluff and the set-up is unconventional enough — which of three 'possibles' did Will Hayes (Reynolds) end up with to create daughter Maya (Little Miss Sunshine's Breslin)? — to keep even the most jaded audience member (i.e., cynical old me) sticking with it and chuckling, quite a lot, in the process.
With her parents' divorce looming, the newly sex-educated Maya wants to know how it all went wrong. If babies are created when two people love each other very, very much, how come her parents are now calling it a day? And how did they get together in the first place? Will gives the precocious Maya the lengthy story of how he and her mom came to be. The twist is Will won't reveal just yet which of the three serious loves of his 20-something life became 'mom'. Hence it could be conventional college sweetheart Emily (Banks), wild bohemian writer Summer (Weisz) or kooky fellow intern April (Fisher). The audience is also kept in the dark, with a few entertaining red herrings thrown in for good measure.
Reynolds is a likeable leading man and, with this and The Nines now under his belt, the whole bulldog semen doughnut / Van Wilder thing is, thankfully, an ever distant memory. Banks and, particularly, Weisz and Fisher have fun with their roles, Derek Luke is underused and all too briefly as Will's 1990's best friend / partner / comic foil, but it's probably Breslin you remember most: she gets most of the best lines and delivers them with a world weariness that belies her age. That you also get Kevin Kline popping up as a womanising alcoholic writer is a considerable bonus. It all settles into a pleasantly distracting groove. Four Weddings it's not but it's not PS I Love You either. Definitely, Maybe sits comfortably in the middle and sometimes there's nothing wrong with that. Flawed yes, but thoroughly enjoyable.
EXTRAS ** The usual deleted scenes; an audio commentary with director Adam Brooks and star Ryan Reynolds; a making-of featurette called Creating a Romance; and a featurette called The Changing TImes of Definitely, Maybe, which is also a bit of a behnd-the-scenes, making-of thingy.