7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A political consultant tries to explain his impending divorce and past relationships to his 11-year-old daughter.
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Rachel Weisz, An Nguyen, Abigail Breslin, Rick DerbyRomance | 100% |
Comedy | 90% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French (Canada): DTS 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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