Dir. Adam Brooks, UK, 2008, 112 mins
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Abigail Breslin Kevin Kline, Rachel Weisz
Review by Carol Allen
The film has an original idea for a romantic comedy. Advertising executive Will (Reynolds) is in the midst of a divorce. His ten year old daughter Maya (Breslin), who is heartbroken about it all, starts to question her dad about his life before he got married and how he and mum first got together and fell in love. Will agrees to tell her the story of how as an idealistic young man and an aspiring politician he came to New York from Wisconsin and became romantically involved with three young women. But he changes their names, so that Maya and indeed we too have to try to guess, who was the one he finally married and who is Maya's mother?
The three woman are his college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks), his best friend April (Isla Fisher), whom he meets in the Democrat campaigning office in 1992, and ambitious young journalist Summer (Weisz). The political background is sharply sketched in and one of the film's amusing aspects is the way it marks our increasing everyday dependence on personal technology over the fifteen years of the film's action from clunky personal cellphones to Blackberries and Ipods. Despite its British producers (Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner) director/writer Brooks's screenplay is very heavy on American values and attitudes, as for example in the puritanism of Maya's reaction to certain parts of her father's story. She lectures him because he used to drink and smoke – used to, mind you – and is totally condemnatory of Summer, when he tells her about how their romance went pear shaped, when Summer chose to write a critical story revealing the downside of the politician her dad was supporting, rather than the puff piece she had promised. Does this perhaps reflect a society with little respect for journalistic ethics?
The most interesting characters in the story are Weisz as Summer and Kline as her older mentor/lover/friend, eminent writer Hampton Roth. He's wickedly funny in the role and one could have done with more of him. Quite early on one begins to think it unlikely that Summer will turn out to be Maya's mum, because she's so patently not the traditional all American girl rom com heroine. She's by far the most intelligent and independent of the three. In contrast, Emily is a somewhat vapid and April, while appealing in her cynicism about politics is a bit of an irritating Meg Ryan clone from Sleepless in Seattle. Reynolds is an attractive hero, not so good looking that he's a film star rather than a real man but Breslin, while a very accomplished young actress, has little to do here except look expectant most of the time. The role is also a bit dialogue heavy for her light voice, particularly when in voice over and the character is often unattractively priggish. The story does however effectively keep you guessing right up to the end not only as to who is the mum but who is Will's true love and will they end up together? And that last is, of course, what romantic comedy is all about.
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