Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Definitely, Maybe Blu-ray Movie Review

Rom-Com Jujitsu

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 21, 2012

Definitely, Maybe does several things to flip the conventions of romantic comedy on their head and avoid the pitfalls of cliche that have rendered so many Katherine Heigl and Jennifer Aniston vehicles unwatchable. First, it uses a male protagonist, which may seem like a small thing, but it isn't. Rom-coms are based on a strict template dating back to Jane Austen, and even when they're written and directed by men, the reigning assumption is that the lead character has to be a woman, because that's the target audience. But it's a silly assumption. Are women only interested in female troubles of the heart? When they watched When Harry Met Sally  . . . , did they tune out for Harry's scenes? Indeed, one of the reasons for that film's enduring appeal is that it sprang from a serious inquiry by two men into the reasons for their romantic failures, and it features two equally balanced protagonists, one from each gender. Jane Austen's template may be the most convenient, but it isn't exclusive.

The other key switch in Definitely, Maybe is that the central relationship isn't romantic. It's the much more emotionally charged connection between a father and his young daughter, when dad and mom are divorcing and the little girl is trying to understand what's happened to the secure world she used to know. As the film unfolds, it becomes obvious that both parents are devoted to their kid, but not so much to each other. So where's the romance?

That last question is the essence of romantic comedy, but Definitely, Maybe asks it from a contemporary perspective in which the odds don't favor a successful marriage and happily ever after is a lousy bet. "I know love isn't a fairy tale", young Maya Hayes tells her dad. As a child of divorce, she's learned it the hard way. Now she wants the real story.

Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) is a thirty-something ad executive in Manhattan. On a day in 2008 when a messenger delivers his final divorce decree to his office for signature, it's also his turn to pick up his ten-year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin), from school. When Will arrives, there's pandemonium in the halls. A frank and explicit lesson about the realities of human reproduction has electrified Maya's class, some of whom are eagerly recounting the gory details to other students in the hallway, while others rush to the parents picking them up and demand to know whether they really do that. Maya approaches her father with calm intensity. The lesson has ignited a tinderbox of questions gathering inside her. She wants to know how her parents met and fell in love. (The underlying agenda, of course, is the same one shared by almost all children of divorce: to discover what might bring them back together.)

After an evening of sparring with Maya in the new apartment where he's still unpacking his boxes, Will finally relents and agrees to tell his daughter the story, but with conditions. He was involved with several women ("What's the boy word for 'slut'?" asks a shocked Maya), and he'll change their names and some facts, and she'll have to guess which one turns out to be her mother.

In 1992, Will leaves his blonde college sweetheart, Emily (Elizabeth Banks), at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for a two-month summer job working on the Clinton campaign in New York. Emily gives him a book to return to her old friend, Summer Hartley (Rachel Weisz), who is worldly, brunette and, at the moment, dating one of her professors (Kevin Kline, effortlessly hilarious). While doing grunt work at the campaign for his motor-mouthed boss, Gareth (Adam Ferrara), Will meets April (Isla Fisher), one of the few people working for the campaign who actually gets paid. A redhead, April is a confirmed cynic. She's also a searcher—for what, she doesn't yet know.

By using women with three different hair colorations, writer-director Adam Brooks isn't trying for anything symbolic, and he certainly isn't giving any clues about Maya's parentage (her hair is is closer to her father's color). He's just being a good storyteller by making each of the three women in Will's life visually distinctive and instantly recognizable. Over the course of six years, Will meets, parts, grows close and draws away from all of them. In one form or another he proposes to each one, but there are always complications and unexpected turns. Not the least of them is Will himself, who, like many people in their twenties, is realizing that what he thought he wanted isn't anything like what he expected. The idealism that drew him to politics doesn't survive dealing with actual politicians (the Monica Lewinsky scandal is the last straw), and an initially successful consulting firm that he starts with a fellow campaign volunteer (Derek Luke) is one of the casualties. So, too, is his relationship with one of the three women. But like all of them, she keeps reappearing.

Smart kid that she is, Maya figures out which one is her mother, just before the lady in question shows up the next morning to take her daughter to the zoo. But the film can't end there, because romantic comedies don't end with a divorce. Listening to her father's story has also revealed to Maya where her father's heart really inclines (other than her, of course), and she even accompanies him (which, as the object of affection points out, gives Will a really unfair advantage, because she can't just shoo him off). To the extent rom-coms are fairy tales, Definitely, Maybe provides a make-believe ending for the age of divorce: one in which the split is completely amicable, the kid not only accepts what's happened, but even chooses the replacement mom (yeah, that could happen), and she just happens to be available and waiting in the wings.

Definitely, Maybe Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Definitely, Maybe is a "catalog" title in the strict sense of the term, but since it's recent enough to have been completed on a digital intermediate, the usual concerns about Universal catalog titles don't apply. Universal's 1080p, VC-1-encoded Blu-ray appears to have been sourced from the digital files, which usually ensures that what appears on the disc matches what was released to theaters. Cinematographer Florian Ballhaus (son of frequent Scorsese collaborator Michael Ballhaus) subtly shifted the visual style for the various time periods depicted in the film. For the New York City of 1992, when Will first arrives, the image is somewhat grainier and gritty, reflecting the era just before the Guiliani clean-up and the Clinton-era economy revived the city's fortunes. As the years move forward toward 1998 (when Maya would have been born), the palette becomes more saturated and the image becomes smoother and richer. In the film's present day, when reality has set in, the imagery is naturalistic (although, since this is Hollywood, naturalism is never entirely natural).

Detail is sufficiently well rendered that you can make out the changing contents of the Two Guys deli where Will buys cigarettes. (In the "Changing Times" featurette, the production designer talks about how an establishment of this sort evolved during the Nineties.) Street settings and scenes in Central Park reveal the level of detail in objects and backgrounds that are indicative of a first-rate Blu-ray presentation. Compression artifacts were not an issue, and if anyone thinks they see any sort of filtering or artificial sharpening (I didn't), they should take it up with the DI colorist, not the Blu-ray technicians.

Definitely, Maybe Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like many comedies, Definitely, Maybe is dialogue-driven, and the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is largely front-centered. However, the film makes effective use of several key musical selections, and the track takes advantage of the full speaker array to let them breathe. A notable example is "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone, which plays over an artfully assembled title montage of Will walking through Manhattan and fills the listening space the way it's supposed to be filling Will's head through his iPod earbuds. A birthday party for Will makes the appropriate amount of noise, and a smoking "bet" in the rain between Will and April supplies a nicely romantic ambiance to accompany the dialogue. The mix effectively distinguishes between the dialogue onscreen and the occasional intrusions from Maya and Will commenting in the present. All of it is clearly rendered. The serviceable underscore was composed by Clint Mansell, who composed the score for Black Swan.

Definitely, Maybe Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Adam Brooks and Actor Ryan Reynolds: Brooks and Reynolds reminisce casually with frequent pauses. While an occasional anecdote proves interesting (usually about Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin or Kevin Kline), the commentary offers little new insight into the story, Reynolds' approach to the role or Brooks's directing technique.


• Deleted Scenes (SD; 2.35:1, non-enhanced; 5:43): There are four short scenes. The most intriguing would have shown that, as part of the life-change associated with his divorce, Will Hayes also left his job in advertising.


• Creating a Romance (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 12:28): This is a professional but low-key EPK, featuring interviews with Reynolds, Brooks, Breslin, Banks, Fisher, Weisz, Luke and producers Lisa Chasin and Bobby Cohen.


• The Changing Times of Definitely, Maybe (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 5:07): Brooks and the principal cast, plus costume designer Gary Jones and production designer Stephanie Carroll discuss the changing look of the film as the story shifts from its present day in 2008 to its flashback period, which begins in 1992 and runs for roughly six years during a time of enormous change in fashion, music and the City of New York.


• My Scenes

Definitely, Maybe Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In another, more famous film about a New York ad man getting a divorce, the couple's child didn't take it so well. Some of the most memorable scenes in Kramer vs. Kramer showed young Billy Kramer struggling to make sense of his shattered family and often lashing out at his father from anger and frustration. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the impact of divorce on young children can appreciate the accuracy with which Robert Benton's film captured these feelings, which often influence the rest of a person's life. One of the impressive magic tricks performed by Definitely, Maybe is to airbrush all of these potential downers out of the picture, in part by clever storytelling, but mostly through the screen chemistry established by Ryan Reynolds and Abigail Breslin, who convincingly create a father-daughter relationship that fathers and daughters everywhere might envy, divorce or no. Idealized characters aren't such a bad thing. They show us what we might be. Highly recommended.