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Sounds like a movie version of How I Met Your Mother.

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For extra awfulness, try the gay romcom, which typically adds the tedious didacticism of the coming-out drama to the mix. (Sometimes they can’t even get the didacticism right: j’accuse Kissing Jessica Stein. “Sexuality is fluid! …Wait, no, it isn’t. My bad.”) A rare example that actually works for me is the French film Pourquoi Pas Moi? which is in the “fake-out” category: you think you’re getting a frothy comedy about a bunch of gay friends collectively coming out to their parents, and you are, but then it turns out two of their mothers used to know each other (in the Biblical sense).

I wonder if Definitely Maybe took cues from How I Met Your Mother? The framing device sounds identical. This is a good thing: HIMYM is very good.

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I agree with you as to the quality of the movie, but in a way it’s the quality of the first 90 minutes that makes the last 20 so disappointing. I felt like writer-director Adam Brooks realized he only had several days worth of film left and had to wrap things up quickly. After taking the time to lay such a quality foundation it was a shame the ending didn’t deliver on it’s promise. I agree that Ryan Reynolds was very good. I’ve seen reviews where they say the film succeeds in spite of him, but these people are clearly morons because he’s very good. It’s frustrating when a movie starts so strong and fails to deliver on it’s potential. It didn’t ruin the film for me, but a solid A dropped to a B+.

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mygif

I don’t agree with the ending dropping the movie down at all, actually: the movie builds very strongly to Reynolds ending up with that person, and while an inconclusive ending just having him be happy with what he had would be realistic and indie, I honestly don’t think it would have been as satisfying. By that point he’s divorced and had a series of unhappy relationships; there has to be some balance.

Scott/Katherine: The resemblance to HIMYM is really very superficial. I love that show, but it uses flashback primarily to play with time and sometimes narrative accuracy, whereas in the movie, the flashback story is told in chronological order and Reynolds doesn’t play hard and fast with the truth.

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mygif

Of all the different kinds of bad movies out there, there’s a special kind where the director & screenwriter truly believe Character A is Good, and we are constantly reminded that Character A is good, and the universe is constructed such that Character A is rewarded as Good characters often are in Hollywood movies. Except that all the evidence is to the contrary, Character A is just awful by anyone’s standards, despite the movie’s desperate attempts to make Character A into a hero.

Romantic comedies tend to fall into this category. Just as one of many examples, consider Four Weddings and a Funeral. Within the context of the movie, Andie MacDowell’s character is supposed to be cute and sassy and a free spirit. But if you take a step back out of the movie, it becomes plain that her character is simply hateful and manipulative.

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mygif

I agree that he should have ended up with the person he ends up with. I thought the choice became obvious, because of the quality of the story and the dialogue. I just wish there had been a little more interaction and dialogue between the two at the end to pay off what had come before.

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mygif

I agree that the movie was an exemplar of the romantic comedy, and its been one of the conventions of the genre since Shakespeare that leads end up together at the end (usually married) so I was O.K. with the ending. I was, however, just a little distracted by the Clinton stuff. I think it would have worked a little better with a fictional/analogue president.

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Abe Froman said on February 19th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

I liked the film, but – without getting too spoilery – I felt like Brooks divulged who Reynolds’ character would ultimately wind up with *way* too early (two words: Jane Eyre).

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mygif

I think I get what Abe is saying with the Jane Eyre thing, and he may have a bit of point, but the connection didn’t occur to me until he mentioned it. The thing that sort of gave it away for me was the order in which the various actresses were credited at the beginning of the movie (and on the poster, for that matter). I think I would have preferred an alphabetical listing of the cast. Well, alphabetical after Ryan Reynolds, because if being in almost every frame of the movie doesn’t earn you top billing, was does?

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mygif

I just saw Definitely, Maybe tonight with a couple of girlfriends. Loved it.

I don’t know that the Jane Eyre allusion gave anything away in a spoiler-ish way. But maybe I just dig literary allusions, being the English major sort that I am. (Besides, the allusion, like most, begins to fall apart once you start intellectually interrogating it. But it works on the surface, which is nice. And I love all things Bronte. And also, allusions aside, it was a nice little storyline.)

I didn’t think the ending ruined any part of the movie. I don’t think it fell short of what was set up at all. I did feel the “reveal” was a little hurried in the moment, but, really, what was left for him to tell? AND I liked (and this could get spoiler-ish… so… if you’re a stickler don’t keep reading) that it wasn’t wrapped up neatly with a married happily ever after thing. I liked that the end of the story wasn’t the end of the story, and let’s tie it all up neatly in a bow. There was a happy ending, of course, structurally there has to be in order for the movie to fit into its genre, but at least there was some sort of wrinkle there. Nice!

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mygif

Regarding the difficulties of writing a romcom- or any kind of contemporary romantic film- Robert McKee’s favourite example is how Brief Encounter (as opposed to Brief Encounters of the 3rd Kind, which is a very different movie) has lost some of its power over time. To its original audience, the fact that the lovers were married to other people was an insurmountable barrier to their relationship, while in the 21st century divorce is common enough that the dilemma doesn’t engage the viewer in the same way. If it’s true that screenplays should be structured as a set of increasingly difficult problems to be overcome, then a modern romance film has to find engaging reasons why two people can’t be together at the same time that the kind of barriers that society has historically erected (barriers of class, for one example) are being or have been removed.

On another note, the title Definitely, Maybe causes a funny kind of dissonance for Brits of a specific age (the ones Phonogram was aimed at) who associate the phrase with Oasis’ debut album.

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mygif

I quite enjoyed the movie but I found it more romance, less comedy. Especially for a movie with Ryan Reynolds and Isla Fisher in it, it was played remarkably straight.

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