putting the j in jjosh

Definitely Maybe – B+

I read three reviews of this film where they basically said "Hey, you know, romantic comedies are usually so dire that when one comes along that isn’t awful, it makes it seem pretty good!" So I went in with reasonably low expectations. Add in the fact that we saw it in the middle of the day, on a whim, and the showtime just happened to match up with when we were walking by the theater.

Further add in the fact that I have a soft spot for romantic comedies (when done well, which is so rarely).

I really liked this film. It kept sort of subverting my expectations and had a good framing device — he is telling his daughter the story of his romantic past and she (and we) is (are) trying to guess which woman is her mother — which the film used to keep poking self-referential fun at the genre. Much the same way in Scream the characters are very horror-film savvy and keep saying things like "Don’t go off alone! That’s when the killer gets you!" There were parts in this where the daughter would say "But can’t you see?! She’s the friend who wants to be something more!" And by drawing attention to them, it gets to wink at the audience and play with genre conventions at the same time.

The negatives I had were mainly with the acting — the lead guy is basically Mr. Bland, the winner of last year’s Bland competition. And Little Miss Sunshine as the daughter was not very good either. Maybe it was weak directing, or maybe they just don’t have that much charisma.

But the film as a whole was a blast. I also couldn’t help noticing that it seemed to lift the framing structure from The Princess Bride (note: maybe my imagination). With the whole "telling a story to the kid in bed" bit, and even down to the part where she was overwhelmed by the story (like Fred Savage in TPB) and the storyteller threatened to stop? Anyway, it’s a great framing device, so no complaints really, I actually sort of admired the fact that they might borrow from TPB for a romantic comedy.

All in all, a really great low expectations, middle-of-the-day, solid romcom genre film.