My Review: ‘Definitely, Maybe’

Last night Keli and I went out on our first real date for quite a while. We went out to dinner at a local restaurant called Latitude Island Grill. While the food was very good, the portions were shockingly small and as such, the price was absurd. But, we never get to splurge and treat ourselves to a nice place for dinner, so it was still worth it. I think, though, that next time we’ll go back to one of the other places we fancy more, such as the Black Rose or the Russian River Brewing Company.

After we were through with dinner we went to see a movie. We initially had wanted to see Jumper, but after several so-so reviews, one of which was from Logtar, we decided to go see “Definitely, Maybe“. This movie had a lot of things going for it such as being made by the same folks that made “Love Actually“, Ryan Reynolds is hilarious and Abigail Breslin was adorable in “Little Miss Sunshine”.

Note: If you plan on seeing this movie and don’t want any spoilers, you’ll want to stop reading now.

I had my doubts going into this movie that the premis would be enough to keep viewers engaged for the length of an average movie. Unfortunately, I was right. The movie was about two hours long yet it seemed to last much, MUCH longer. The cast was pretty good and the storyline had promise.

For Will Hayes, a second look at the past will give him a second chance at the future.

The movie takes place as a series of flashbacks, during which William Hayes (played by Ryan Reynolds) and his daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin) are getting ready for bed when she demands that her father tells her how he met her mother. It should be noted that the audience had just found out that Will Hayes and his wife are going through a divorce. With much persistence, Maya finally convinces Will to tell her the story of how he met her mother, with a couple of caveats: He will change the names of those involved and his daughter will have to figure out which person in the story is her mother.

Shortly after the stage was set and the first flashback begins, all interest was lost, I thought. The story followed Will as he bounced between any one of three women, as he struggles to make a name for himself on the political scene by working on the campaign to re-elect President Bill Clinton in the 90’s. There seemed to be too many side stories and I think that’s what ruined the film for me. There were characters which, while they had tremendous depth, they simply acted as fluff to this film. You could remove a number of characters and side stories and have a better paced movie. Sometimes, too many details really can be a bad thing.

I was happy with the ending, only because the rest of the movie was such a downer that afterwards I really felt the need to have a stiff drink.

For anyone interested in seeing this movie, I definitely think you should wait and pay a few bucks to rent it from your local video store when it comes out or add it to your Netflix queue. I see no reason why you should throw away money to go to the theater to watch it.

On the upside, I did see a poster for a movie where Jim Carrey and Steve Carell do the voices of characters in the CGI version of Dr. Seuss’ “Horton Hears a Who!“

Related posts:

1. My Review: Broken Flowers
2. My review: Garden State
3. Where are all the Wookies?!
4. Gunner Palace
5. Happy Anniversary to Us!

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