Maybe I Do (2023)
Maybe I Do is a strangely uninspired romcom, even though it stars big names like Richard Gere and Diane Keaton.
I say ‘strangely uninspired’, because the movie is the passion project of writer and director Michael Jacobs. A veteran of the American movie and television world, who created the long running tv series Boy Meets World, while he was also a producer on the movie Quiz Show (1994), directed by Robert Redford and nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
I say ‘passion project’, because Jacobs is now in his mid-sixties and Maybe I Do is not only his first feature film but also based on his first play Cheaters, from 1977. So I’m guessing there is something deeply personal about this whole project. I just can’t figure out what.
It’s always a pleasure to see actors like Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, William H. Macy and Diane Keaton at work, but this project isn’t up to their usual standard.
Budgeted at a modest 7 1/2 million dollars, I guess most of the money went to the stars, cause the rest of the movie, including the cinematography, feels rather flat.
Michelle (Emma Roberts) and Allen (Luke Bracey) are in a relationship. She wants to get married, he thinks they are fine as they are. About to break up they decide to have dinner with both sets of parents - who for some reason have never met - and try to figure out what makes their marriages work. Or not.
The night will not go as planned. Thing is, Allen’s parents Howard (Richard Gere) and Grace (Diane Keaton) are kinda sorta cheating on each other with Michelle’s folks, Monica (Susan Sarandon) and Sam (William H. Macy), respectively.
Howard and Monica have been seeing each other for three months, while Sam and Grace just spent one evening together, and all they did was talk.
Speaking of talk, there is a lot of that in Maybe I Do. And that’s a big reason, coupled with the fact it’s not visually interesting, that it doesn’t really feel like a movie, but more like, well, a play.
And also, the dialogue, while it may have been cutting edge back in the seventies, it all feels rather cliched by today’s standards. ‘One day you wake up and feel like life is passing you by,’ Grace offers up at one point, and no matter how relatable that may be - or whatever the outcome of the story is - this movie just passes you by too.