Plot: Michelle and Allen have reached the point in their relationship to take the next steps toward marriage. Thinking it is a good idea to invite their parents to finally meet, they set a dinner and make it a family affair. To everyone’s surprise, the affair takes on a whole new meaning as the parents already know each other all too well-they’ve been cheating on their spouses for months…with each other. Trapped in this precarious predicament, they try to hide their dalliances from the kids while confronting their spouse’s lovers head-on. Let the games begin!
Review: I went into Maybe I Do with no expectations. These days, the stars of this film have appeared in countless romantic comedies, some of which have been received better than others. When you make that many rom-coms, they tend to blend together, so unless you are a dedicated fan of the genre, general audiences are liable to skip them. Maybe I Do is one of those movies that could easily get lumped in with many other movies and not get the exposure that names like Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and William H. Macy have commanded in the past. With snappy dialogue and a throwback concept, Maybe I Do recalls the type of comedy movies we don’t really see anymore with actors who are still at the top of their game.
Maybe I Do begins with Sam (William H. Macy) crying into his popcorn while watching a foreign film. Grace (Diane Keaton) approaches him, and the pair start a conversation and find an immediate attraction. At the same time, Howard (Richard Gere) is struggling with Monica (Susan Sarandon), a woman he wants to end his relationship with. Little do any of these characters know, but they will soon meet each other and discover they are having affairs with each other’s spouses, as Monica is married to Sam, and Howard is married to Grace. The quartet meets when their kids, Michelle (Emma Roberts) and Allen (Luke Bracey), bring them together as they try to figure out the next step in their relationship. This comedy of errors may seem like it is something that has been done before, and it has, but it works here thanks to the acting from the veteran foursome playing the adulterous parents.
Many romantic comedies would put the young, attractive couple at the story’s center and let the kooky parents do the comedy around them. Maybe I Do instead ties all of the relationships together through the idea of what marriage means. Each pair is struggling with their partners for different reasons, and Michelle and Allen’s looming decision of whether to get married or go their separate ways is influenced by their parents’ marriages, for better or worse. Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey have good chemistry in their scenes. Roberts delivers a masterful sequence early in the film where she gives an extended monologue while walking around her apartment and getting undressed. The scene feels like it came straight out of a 1970s or 1980s relationship movie, and Roberts nails it with Bracey serving as her scene partner, lobbing dialogue back at her to keep her in the moment.
Of the older actors, all four of whom do good work here, Richard Gere seems the most out of place. While he is known for his film pairings with Emma Roberts’ aunt, Julia, he seems a bit out of his element here compared to the other three. Susan Sarandon does some solid work vamping it up as the sexually bored wife of nice guy, Sam. Equally, William H. Macy gives the most layered performance as Sam, who is stuck in a loveless marriage when he runs into his perfect match, Grace. Grace, however, only has eyes for Howard. Always the movie star, Keaton continues to shine in these roles and brings out her quirks in the best way possible. Serving as an executive producer, Keaton has never phoned in a performance and continues to play well with her scene-mates and makes this movie a lot of fun. All four of the veteran actors play well off of each other, likely do to several of them have shared the screen before (Keaton and Gere in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Keaton and Sarandon in The Big Wedding, Gere and Sarandon in Shall We Dance? and Arbitrage, as well as Keaton and Macy briefly in Radio Days).
Writer/director Michael Jacobs, best known for creating the sitcoms Boy Meets World, Dinosaurs, and My Two Dads evokes elements common to network sitcoms and stage plays by driving the comedy of errors elements of this story in between the formulaic and cliche elements of romantic comedies. There are many moments in this movie that I was expecting to go in different directions but ended up keeping things as expected. The performances drive this movie which runs a lean ninety minutes and features some confusing choices, like opening and closing narration from Gere, despite the story focusing more on the ensemble rather than just his character. The story wraps up relatively conventionally, even though the premise should have made things messier. It should go without saying that movies like this have happy endings, and Maybe I Do does not disappoint in that regard, even if it is not the fairy tale resolution that it could have had.
Maybe I Do starts out with the potential to be closer to the Woody Allen comedies of old with a solid ensemble who all act well off of one another, especially Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, and William H. Macy. This is a heartfelt and feel-good movie with some solid moments between the expected and formulaic ones that any connoisseur of romantic comedies will spot coming a mile away. The older audiences watching this movie will be charmed by the age-appropriate couples acting inappropriately. At the same time, younger viewers will enjoy these talented actors having fun on screen. Overall, Maybe I Do is a harmless addition to the romantic comedy genre and does not do much to change it. Harmless, sweet, and brief, this is a nice little date movie that delivers exactly what it advertises.