Ryan Reynolds’ career has been defined by snarky detachment. Since his early days as Van Wilder, the Free Guy star has built his onscreen persona around an ability to wink at the material he’s playing—a skill he took to its logical extreme in Deadpool. But the truth is that it can often be easier to deliver subversive commentary than to do a well-worn genre right. That’s especially true for romantic comedies, which have tropes so familiar and missteps so mockable that the parodies practically write themselves. It’s not hard to score points with a deconstructed rom-com. What’s rarer and more special is when a romantic comedy can breathe new life into old formulas without throwing the rest of the genre under the bus. And back in 2008, an unassuming Reynolds vehicle managed to do just that.
Definitely, Maybe has a depth of humanism that’s both surprising and refreshing, especially for a studio rom-com made as the genre headed towards its nadir. Romantic comedies are always trying to walk the tightrope between evoking real-world experiences while still keeping things light and comforting. And writer/director Adam Brooks gets that balance just right, partially through his understanding that the two most precious commodities in a romantic comedy are time and empathy. So his film unfolds across 16 years of plot, as life, love, and work intersect in a world in which there are no “right” or “wrong” love interests, just flawed people trying their best.
Plotwise, Definitely, Maybe is essentially How I Met Your Mother with a dash of High Fidelity. Reynolds is Will Hayes, a late-30s political consultant turned advertising exec on the verge of a divorce. When his 10-year-old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) comes home from school with some lingering questions about a sex ed class—not to mention an ulterior motive of trying to get her parents back together—she asks her dad to tell her the story of how he met her mom. Will agrees but decides to change the names and details in order to spin a “love story mystery.” So Maya is left to guess which of three very different women from Will’s past might be her mother: sunny college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks), adventurous nonconformist April (Isla Fisher), or confident, cultured writer Summer (Rachel Weisz).
That means Definitely, Maybe’s narrative unfolds on two different levels. On the one hand, it’s a classic coming of age tale for Will, whose story starts when he arrives in New York City as an idealistic staffer for the 1992 Clinton campaign. On the other hand, it’s also the story of a kid first starting to realize that her parents are complicated people with their own messy humanity. There are moments when Maya struggles to wrap her head around the idea that any of the flawed young women Will describes could possibly be her responsible, loving mother. It’s hard enough for her to handle the news that her dad used to be a smoker.
Will’s smoking habit is an early sign that even though Definitely, Maybe has a glossy studio sheen, it hasn’t been entirely sanitized. Smoking is one of those common habits that’s been weirdly erased from 21st-century rom-coms, the better to paint a rosy, clean-cut picture of the world. But in Definitely, Maybe, it’s one of the first things that Will and April bond over, as they bet on whose preferred brand of cigarettes will burn faster. Though the film only intermittently engages with its ’90s setting (and not at all in its costuming), the cigarettes are the sort of authentic detail that goes a long way towards making its world feel real.
It also helps that Definitely, Maybe isn’t a “soulmate rom-com” about how there’s one perfect person for everyone. Instead, it looks at the realistic ways in which timing, circumstance, and miscommunication can impact and upend relationships. And it finds hope in the fact that good things can still come out of a romance that’s not meant to last. Definitely, Maybe is essentially the cinematic equivalent of the adage that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime—and that there’s value in all three. Brooks sees love as a journey, not a goal. And that allows him to pull off a much more successful version of the same sort of twist ending that How I Met Your Mother biffed.
While How I Met Your Mother stretched out its story too long to make its pre-planned ending land, the power of Definitely, Maybe is in its ability to elegantly collapse time. The movie weaves a decade and a half into two hours, which gives its rom-com arcs a unique poignancy. At times Brooks zooms in on the nuances of a specific hurt, like a brutal fight that drives Will and April apart for years. But he can also zoom out to capture the way that time shifts our perspectives too. In one scene, Will and Summer have a quietly devastating break-up over a conflict of interest in their respective careers. The next time we see them together, however, it’s a few years later and the old hurts have softened into a nostalgic desire to turn over a new leaf of friendship. The movie offers savvy insight into the way that time can, if not heal all wounds, at least cushion them quite a bit.
Definitely, Maybe also resists falling back on reductive love triangle clichés. While rom-coms with multiple female leads often pit them against one another in order to use the flaws of one character to argue for why another is the “right” kind of woman, Definitely, Maybe eschews that entirely. It’s part of what lets the movie pull off its genuine sense of suspense and surprise. You could see Will being happy with any of these women. And though the time-jumping premise leaves a lot of gaps in the characters’ onscreen lives, Banks, Fisher, and Weisz make up for that with the three-dimensional humanity they bring to their respective roles. Definitely, Maybe strikes a nice balance between delivering lived-in specificity and leaving space for the audience to project some of their own details onto the story too.
For his part, Reynolds turns in one of the sweetest, warmest performances of his career. Though he would go on to have a bigger rom-com hit opposite Sandra Bullock in The Proposal the next year, Definitely, Maybe is easily his best work in the genre—far more so than the Van Wilder schtick he used to paper over the toxicity of Just Friends. As Will grows up, his youthful idealism stagnates into pragmatic acceptance, and Reynolds captures both sides of that coin without falling back on any of his usual bag of deadpan comedic tricks. He’s playing an actual character, not just a snarky persona. And particularly from the vantage point of 2021, there’s an intriguing meta layer to watching Reynolds portray a guy whose romantic ups and downs feel like a metaphor for the actor’s rollercoaster career through Hollywood.
Though Definitely, Maybe did okay at the box office and got a decently warm critical reception, it isn’t a movie that’s particularly stuck in the cultural consciousness—perhaps because even the best rom-coms of its era were generally met with a base level of scorn. While Reynolds was able to ditch the faltering genre and (eventually) find success in the superhero one instead, Definitely, Maybe’s creator hasn’t been so lucky. Brooks seems to have faced the same problem that a lot of would-be leading ladies did in the 2010s: The type of movie he was best suited to making was no longer in fashion. Brooks has yet to direct another film since Definitely, Maybe, although he did co-write the 2018 Sanaa Lathan Netflix rom-com Nappily Ever After (and create Bravo’s dark comedy series Imposters).
It’s a shame because Brooks has a real knack for injecting originality into the rom-com template without looking down on its cornier tropes. Most importantly, he understands that a good rom-com isn’t just about romance. In Definitely, Maybe, Brooks has an interest in relationships of all kinds, including Summer’s strange co-dependent bond with aging cad Professor Hampton Roth (Kevin Kline) and the complicated interpersonal ecosystem of Will’s fellow campaign staffers. Most poignant of all is Will’s relationship with Maya, and her slow acceptance of the fact that her parents aren’t meant to be together. At this age, Breslin was a master of playing kids struggling to process complicated adult emotions, and she puts that skill to great use in the movie’s emotional climax, as Will emphasizes that she’s more important to him than any of his romantic relationships.
As Reynolds’ career continues to climb in the wisecracking action-comedy direction, Definitely, Maybe is worth seeking out—both as a good rom-com from a bad era for the genre and as a solid application of the actor’s charms. It’s optimistic without being unrealistic and sweet without being completely saccharine. It’s a movie that’s aware of rom-com tropes but doesn’t worry too much about winking at its audience. Definitely, Maybe isn’t just set in the 1990s; it calls to mind the best of what creators like Nora Ephron and Richard Curtis produced during that era. And it proves that sincerity can be just as entertaining as snark.
Next time: There’s no replacing She’s All That.
65 Comments
I saw this once in a hotel room in Hanoi on TET 2010 when it was absolutely fucking freezing outside.I remember knowing nothing about it going in and actually quite enjoying it.There’s a nice little scene right at the end where Reynold’s character spots Bill Clinton in Central Park and gets a thumbs up which I recall finding nice after his disillusionment during the late 90s.
I had a similar experience watching this on a plane knowing nothing about it and liking it coming out
Same, but a Hampton Inn in Helen, GA on a zero day while hiking the AT.
Any good will I might have felt towards this movie was lost at the end, when Maya figures out which woman was her mother because she tilted her head in a certain way. Either Maya has mystical powers that allow her to see what we’re seeing, or else Ryan Reynolds was so incredibly detailed in this story that he described every minute detail of what happened over a 16-year period. Either way, I cannot endorse this film.
This was a perfectly pleasant movie. Some stuff alas didn’t age very well, namely the slutshaming and the unbearable whiteness. I was only in middle school when it came out, and it did a fine job introducing me to Nirvana. Hard to imagine there was a time Ryan Reynolds didn’t have to pump his smarminess into overdrive to become Hollywood’s Latest Funny Man™.
Nice article, Caroline. Loved that you noted when the kid was realizing maybe all grow-up stories aren’t all that simple.
I just adore this column. You’re such a wonderful writer, Caroline. I’m by no means a devotee of the genre, but my family and I have always been drawn to them for comfort, and your pieces always strike a perfect balance between zooming out to look at the industry/evolution of the genre and then just zeroing in on what’s so infectiously fun and defensible about these movies. Thank you for loving rom-coms and loving writing about them and doing your bit to lend the A.V. Club a bit of its glory days magic with your rich, expert, sincere writing.I watched this one for the first time tonight, largely because I needed something above-average light and a Rachel Weisz hit (I was quite impressed with Fisher, too), but partly because I was honestly just looking forward to reading your article after.
I suspect this might have done better commercially if it didn’t have the framing story of Reynolds talking to his young kid. Marketed as a comedy-drama about the romantic relationships of a young man, it would probably have more appeal to many people than the thought of Reynolds delivering a sex-ed talk to a precocious kid.
There’s a movie with Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher, and Rachel Weisz, and I haven’t seen it? Unbelievable! Alexa, Add to queue!Definitely remember hearing of the title when it came out, maybe don’t remember ever knowing a single other thing about it.
not a fan of rom-coms or ryan reynolds, but it’s decent! except for the child; abigail breslin’s character is insufferable.
and i’ll never understand why people insist on making rachel weisz speak in a US accent. regardless, i’d love to see another movie with her and kevin kline
Wait a second, this movie has Ryan Reynolds, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and to top it all Kevin Kline???? That is one stacked cast. Thanks for the write up, I’m going to have to check this one out.If your looking for an obscure rom-com with a superhero actor, I’d suggest Overnight Delivery. It has Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon. I saw it on tv about a decade ago and I’m curious how it holds up.
If your looking for an obscure rom-com with a superhero actor, I’d suggest Overnight Delivery. It has Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon. I saw it on tv about a decade ago and I’m curious how it holds up.Oh, man… that’s the movie that launched the epic Kevin Smith vs. Reese Witherspoon grudge he’s held for decades…https://www.viewaskew.com/press/psycomic/5.html
But that doesn’t earn her the nickname “Greasy.” Reese becomes Greasy when I’m later informed that, on the set of Overnight, she quite audibly mocked me.
Me! Radio Raheem!
The mockery was thus: Reese and Paul Rudd (the male lead) are doing the closing shot of the flick, where they walk away from camera. They’re supposed to be talking playfully, but since it’s understood this is the closing shot (and, presumably, end-credits music will be playing), no dialogue is written. So the director tells the actors to just make stuff up, as it’s not going to be heard anyway. What follows is the exchange, as told to me and my elephantine memory (and ass), by someone who was there.
REESE: Who wrote this shit?
PAUL: I think Kevin Smith.
REESE: Ugh! Didn’t he write Mallrats?
PAUL: Yeah, but he also wrote Clerks.
REESE: Who cares? No wonder this dialogue sucked.
Needless to say, when I’m told this, I am livid. Enraged. Mildly amused, yes (hell, it was a good dig), but more enraged. And from that moment forward, I’ve never referred to her as anything but Greasy (pronounced “GREE-ZEE”) Reese (pronounced “REE-ZEE”) Witherspoon (pronounced accordingly).Jesus, that’s one of the cringier things I’ve read this morning.
Yeah, in fairness the post is 20 years old (!!!) but yeah…
that’s the kevin smith guarantee!
Comedy Central aired Overnight Delivery roughly once a month from 2004-2006, so I’ve probably seen enough bits and pieces of it to have seen the whole thing 2 or 3 times. I remember it being…fine? Mostly I remember Reese Witherspoon being surprisingly pretty as a brunette.
Personal opinion: I dislike Overnight Delivery. Maybe, I’m old fashioned, but you ought to like the characters in romantic comedies. Still, some funny bits with Larry Drake and pre-Saw Tobin Bell.
I’ll ruin it for you: Overnight Delivery is really bad. It’s a personal favorite because it used to sneak onto Comedy Central late at night after Reese blew up and it resulted in a huge crush on Christine Taylor (as well as seeded an appreciation for Paul Rudd in the Apatowassaince to come) but Overnight Delivery itself is a low budget dry run for Road Trip, which made EuroTrip possible, which made “Scotty Doesn’t Know” a thing, which validates Overnight Delivery’s existence but doesn’t make it recommendable.
And he got that cast on a budget of $7 million!
For once my library owns a copy, so I can check it out. Sounds like something I can easily turn on in the background while I spend all weekend cooking.
I think about this movie regularly. I think it is genuinely wise. I also think that the world would be a better place if its lessons (there are many people who can be more or less right for you, breakups do not always happen because one person is bad) were much more mainstream in romantic media. The idea of the “one right person out there for everyone” has caused a lot of unnecessary stress and sadness. However, good god, do I ever hate the ending. Oh, I hate it. Don’t know if I can spoiler tag, but I will just say that Ryan Reynolds character is transparently lying his ass off and the woman at the end should not have put up with it.
“Brooks sees love as a journey, not a goal. And that allows him to pull off a much more successful version of the same sort of twist ending that How I Met Your Mother biffed.”Man, I would’ve respected HIMYM a lot more if it turned out that Ted and the mother character were more-or-less happily divorced, but no, it had to be “your mother was the perfect fated-to-be soulmate love of my love but oh wait she’s dead so I guess I was in love with your Aunt Robin all along?”
I can’t believe that Definitely, Maybe came out three seasons into HIMYM and they still stuck to their Robin plan, instead of realizing, ‘Oh, they really nailed that. It helps that they set everything up in the first scenes so when it all comes back around it makes sense. We didn’t do that, maybe we should rethink where this is headed…”
“Well, we know that Ted and Robin is the eventual endgame, so we need to keep demonstrating how he never quite got over her.”“Isn’t there a risk that fans will interpret Ted sniffing after Robin for years—long after we’ve established that they’re fundamentally incompatible—as increasingly sad and obsessive?”“Nah, we’ll just keep implying that he’ll never be able to truly move on from Robin and grow as a person until he meets Dead Mother.”“Yeah, that’ll throw ’em off the scent. Speaking of—we should probably get around to giving Dead Mother a name.”“Eh, whatever.”
Maybe that can be her actual name. A bit on the nose, but still…
I think they thought about it? But they quickly realised they couldn’t film anything with the son and daughter after season 1 because the actors aged. So they had that one scene they filmed for the finale WAY back in season 1, and dammit they were going to cram it in there no matter how much it made no sense.
The alternate ending is soooooo much better. Tho’ it doesn’t fix spending an entire season on Barney/Robin’s weeding then immediately divorcing them or Lily just getting shafted.
The problem was, they filmed the ending when it looked like they’d be cancelled in season 1. Where it would have worked, with Victoria being the mother and Robin being the love of his life. It would have worked at the end of season 2. But after that, they stopped writing Ted and Robin in love with each other. It wasn’t like Friends where no matter what went on with either character, the Rachel and Ross story was always being developed. They just weren’t written as having any sexual tension, the Robin and Barney story was given a lot of attention, and Ted kept talking about how he wanted kids and Robin didn’t. And then, by season 9, long after we were sick of these characters, the only new or interesting part of the last season was The Mother, they can’t end it with “Oh yeah then she died and I’m in love with the woman I’m totally incompatible with who had a seasons-long arc about her love story with someone else.” The should could have had Ted and the Mother amicably divorce, whatever. What it couldn’t do is sell Ted and Robin as the love story.
I remember Jason Segel was pulling for the mom to be dead in an interview before the show ended.He was incorrect.
“Smoking is one of those common habits that’s been weirdly erased from 21st-century rom-coms, the better to paint a rosy, clean-cut picture of the world.”I just re-watched Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead for the first time in a while and was really struck by the casual smoking. A 17-year-old (who is maybe insensitive but not a “bad girl”) just lighting up in front of her mom! That kind of thing, along with the smoking inside at work throughout the movie, is definitely not coming back but I really like this point about adult smoking, especially in rom-coms — yes the habit is bad but 1. it looks cool as shit on film, 2. it is still a pretty common habit and 3. it is a great shortcut to more intimate interaction. Bring back smoking!
I was rewatching Saving Face with the director’s commentary (after watching it for the first time on Caroline’s recommendation here and loving it), and there’s quite a bit of smoking in it too. There was one part where the director said people ask her why there’s so much smoking in it and say that she’s glorifying smoking, but she’s like, “I just wanted to give the characters something to do. They could’ve been peeling organic fruit but that would just look weird.” And like you said in your third point, it’s easy way to show casual interaction between characters, because smoking together on the roof sets up several scenes of conversation between the lead and her neighbor.
You know what looks stupid and horrible on film? Vaping. No judgements on anyone who does that IRL but I have a hard time taking a character seriously if they pull out the vape pen and it work to replace smoking at all.
I honestly think they pulled this off well and “realistic” with Mare of Easttown
any theories as to why that is?
i agree with you, and as a recent ex-smoker who still thinks that cigarettes are the coolest-looking drug ever, i’m trying to figure out why.
That’s an interesting point! I wonder if it’s partly because cigarettes pretty much look the same, so there is a sort of egalitarianism there. But whenever someone takes out a vape pen in a film or TV it’s always some particular design, it’s never generic in that way. Similar perhaps to the difference between a character smoking a cigarette and them smoking a cigar. The cigarette brings them closer, the cigar distances them.
I love this movie. It’s a little clunky sometimes and I don’t terribly love all the Clinton stuff, but the cast is perfect and, as Caroline says, it does a great job of portraying the passage of time (not dissimilar to When Harry Met Sally). And the plot takes some genuinely surprising turns, more than most romcoms. That’s in part because it does a good job portraying the different love interests as complex people with both good and bad qualities, as opposed to the more usual romcom thing of having the main love interest be great-except-for-minor-defects and the competing love interest be either obviously bad or just unspeakably bland. So it’s not obvious who Reynolds’ character would, or should end up with, or even whether any of them are compatible with him at all.
Hot take: Isla Fisher’s character was to much of a MPDG and Reynold’s had much better chemistry with Wiesz than her or Banks.
I saw this on video not long after it came out, liked it a lot, and apparently forgot about it because I started watching it again a couple of years later and got about 20 minutes in before I realized I’d seen it before.
This happens once in a while, but that’s usually the point where I stop watching. I kept watching with this one. Still like it a lot, remember it better now.
I’m so strongly trained to ignore all references to How I Met Your Mother that my eyes glided over this entry on the front page, and I honestly thought Caroline had taken the week off. It’s not like I hate the show or anything, but it’s definitely a cultural marker that I decided to skip back when it was popular, and these days whenever it comes up, it’s as if everyone decided to have an animated conversation about carburetor repair. I’m lost.Given Caroline’s recommendation, and that cast, I definitely think I’ll watch this movie.
I’m still suspicious of How I Met Your Mother’s seeming popularity. It’s my bias against CBS sitcoms. Like the Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, I just feel like something fishy is going on and I don’t know who to trust, lol. But Definitely Maybe is a pleasant watch. Trades on being cute because of the kid, but also clever because of the twist on the concept, and more mature than it looks.
The first half of How I met Your Mother was a thousand times better than either of those other shows. The second half was fine. It ran about two seasons too long, but it wasn’t the abomination some make it out to be.
HIMYM was quite good, for a short while. And interesting & different compared to the usual.It *WAY* outstayed its welcome. But if you ever want to see what people liked about it, the show’s peak was definitely the consecutive season 3 episodes “Spoiler Alert” and “Slapsgiving”. Watch those, say ok I get it, and then never watch another episode.
How I Met Your Mother has some funny episodes and the cast is great, but.. boy, Ted (the main character) is so unappealing. I don’t know if he was written to be such, but I didn’t like him at all.And the last episode was such a mess – a really odd reach when it could have been a simple “oh, and here she is” as Cristin Milioti walks in. Killing her off (sorry, spoiler) was just dumb.
“Ryan Reynolds traded snark for sincerity”That’s literally half of Reynolds’ roles, with the other half being the times he lays the snark on extra-thick.
But the truth is that it can often be easier to deliver subversive commentary than to do a well-worn genre right. That’s especially true for romantic comedies, which have tropes so familiar and missteps so mockable that the parodies practically write themselves. Speaking of romcom parodies, what’s the consensus on They Came Together? It’s got an all-star cast and I love Wet Hot American Summer, but I watched it several years ago and remember being kind of disappointed by it. Just didn’t tickle me as much as WHAS or First Day of Camp (still better than Ten Years Later though). It came to mind because it popped up in my recommendations on Hulu recently, so maybe I’m due for a rewatch.
Most people love They Came Together, but to me, it was basically 90 minutes of Michael Showalter and David Wain constantly nudging me from either side and yelling in my ears, ‘Do you get it?! Wink!’. The rom-com genre could use a good spoof. I’m still waiting.
It was too surreal to be taken seriously, but also waaaaay too serious to actually be funny. Just totally missed the mark.
That pretty much encapsulates my thoughts on it too. Like something about the stuffy romcom sheen of it sort of killed the humor, and the absurdity wasn’t played straight enough to make it work (compared to say, the parodies of media in 30 Rock).
I think it has moments that are outstanding and worth watching the whole movie for (the basketball game!) but doesn’t quite manage the trick of being well paced and funny the whole way through.
I remember being really excited to see They Came Together and then I think I was so bored that I didn’t even make it through? Is that right? I don’t know. I just know that I was definitely disappointed.
This was depressing as I’m imagining bring an aspiring filmmaker, getting this cast and production together and making a pretty good movie, and then having that be the last one you get to make. Like, they had to watch the final cut and get good audience reaction and good reviews and think “I’ve made it!”
Agreed. What a kick in the nuts that would be.
You’re just so good at this :)I love your write-ups and often find new movies to love. Your column hasn’t steered me wrong yet. And it has made me look at old favorites with a new eye. I know you are doing your job, I just wanted to say that you do it well in a way that contributes to the cultural consciousness. Your articles come out on my paydays and it is always something extra for me to look forward to on those days. Pay Day? Let’s check out When Romance Met Comedy’s new entry! This column feeds my mind and encourages me to explore more media. Why the extra long/random thank you? I don’t have much to say about this particular film, but a lot of writers from various affiliated sites left this week and it’s always good to say thank you where and when you can.Have a good weekend, everyone!
Yep. I love this part:
from the vantage point of 2021, there’s an intriguing meta layer to
watching Reynolds portray a guy whose romantic ups and downs feel like a
metaphor for the actor’s rollercoaster career through Hollywood.
That’s a great piece of commentary
That part about his career made me laugh. A friend and I were talking about Reynolds the other day, and I was just “It has never made sense to me who has spent so much effort trying to make him happen. I didn’t get it when he was on Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, or pretty much anything since.” Granted I’m not into superhero movies, and I’m sort of intrigued by the plot of Free Guy, so maybe I’ll check this out and see if it improves my opinion of him.
He’s playing an actual character, not just a snarky persona.And if you knew Reynolds from Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place, even back then, this was different for him. I’ve been a fan of the guy for a long time, but I admit I felt he was only ever good at being one kind of character. (Seeing him struggle to play against type in The Amityville Horror remake really cemented my theory). Even in this movie, he is who he is, but dialed way down, to where he feels more like a real person. I’d like to see him do this again.
I just saw this a few weeks ago, and yes, it’s really good. But now I’m not sure what prompted me to watch it, since I thought I’d seen it written up here by Ms. Siede.Anyway, very good an insightful review here. The cast is amazing and the story is a grownup and funny take on relationships.
Great write-up for a great movie!There are very few movies that make both my “This is an amazing movie with probably my favorite performance of one of my favorite actors (Ryan Reynolds, maybe also Isla Fisher)“ as well as my “It’s 2:30 on a Saturday, oh this movie is on TBS, sure I’ll spend two hours watching this” lists. I think part of that is that a lot of my favorite films are more “prestige (feel free to read this as convoluted and pretentious)“ and tend to give me a feeling of pre-exhaustion anytime I even think of casually rewatching them. But, Definitely, Maybe is a movie I watched on a whim randomly in high school and it’s both one of my favorite films (quite possibly my favorite rom-com) as well on my short list of movies I would watch at any time, anywhere, at any point of the movie’s runtime.
This movie is so much better than How I Met Your Mother and well worth a watch. It does that When Harry Met Sally thing where you can watch the characters change over time, which naturally changes how they interact with each other. I also like how his youthful fervor and hope in the political process is crushed under the reality of all of the things he truly believed in being just marketing for the candidates.
Great choice and write-up, Caroline!I’m also pleased that you called out Just Friends. A while back a bunch of people kept praising it as some sort of modern classic, so I gave it a shot. It is quite awful.
sd
Yeah but is Ryan’s character as bad a character as Ted Mosby?
I always loved this movie and I’m not a huge fan of rom-coms (though I appreciate them from time to time). It also has a Forrest Gump-like feeling to it listening to a person talk about various relationships with people over a wide period of time. As you mentioned, you can see a relationship get fractured but in the next scene with them, you feel the time that’s passed and past hurts have thawed, similar to Forret’s relationships with Jenny, Lt Dan, etc.
love this movie!
This is hands-down the best plane movie I ever watched (helped that the only other thing on was the Rolling Stones concert doc). It’s episodic and allows you to snooze in and out, and everything is agreeably chirpy and warm without quite being too saccharine. Plus, Isla Fisher is just on fire in this. I’m surprised this didn’t become a TV staple, it’s definitely got that “drop in at any point and watch to the end” quality.