Mark Reviews Movies: MAYBE I DO

Maybe I Do, Vertical Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 26, 2023

The cast isn't the problem with Maybe I Do, which gathers together a noteworthy ensemble and gives them terrible material with which to wrestle. The premise is somewhat amusing, in the contrived way that the pilot to a sitcom might be, and it comes, then, as little surprise to learn that writer/director Michael Jacobs has a background in that television genre.

The whole movie is setup for payoffs that never arrive, perhaps because the filmmaker is used to establishing a status quo, no matter how wacky and convoluted it may be, and figuring out the comedy from there. For all of the delaying going on here, one wonders if Jacobs hoped this basic scenario would serve as the starting point for a weekly TV comedy. If a premise is going to carry on for a while, one has to save some of the jokes for later, after all. Jacobs seems to forget to them in this case, though.

Much of this is speculation about the movie's origin, of course. What we do know for sure is that the screenplay is credited as being based on Jacobs' own play, which also makes a lot sense, considering how dialogue-heavy this story turns out to be. That's why the cast is so important, but even these actors seem at a loss as to how handle the clunky, inauthentic lines the screenplay presents to them.

The basic setup revolves around three couples. All six of the main characters are in a position to be questioning whether or not they're happy with their love lives at the moment—or if romantic love is even possible between two people for any significant amount of time.

We first meet Howard (Richard Gere) and Monica (Susan Sarandon), who have come to a fancy hotel in the city for some quality alone-time. It becomes apparent that the two are married—not to each other, of course—and having an affair, but while Monica wants to get busy with what the two came here to do, Howard is having some kind of moral quandary about what he's doing, some existential crisis about how fleeting life is, or both. He wants to end the affair, and Monica promises revenge. It's all very heavy-handed (especially a dragged-out farewell, which is saying something when Monica has a cruel outburst when a clerk dares to refer to her as "ma'am"), but at least the conclusion of that scene seems to promise something to come later.

It's a promise Jacobs doesn't really keep, because this scene is also intercut with two others. The first features Sam (William H. Macy) and Grace (Diane Keaton), who meet by chance at a movie theater, where she wants to console him for whatever's causing his open weeping. The two start talking and hit it off at a fried chicken joint. Sam arranges for a stay at a seedy motel for the two of them, but Grace is too religious to follow through on the spontaneous moment.

The other scene involves Michelle (Emma Roberts) and Allen (Luke Bracey), who have been dating for a while, at a wedding for one of her friends. She intent on catching the bouquet, but a nervous Allen leap off a table to intercept the flowers. Humiliated, Michelle gives Allen 24 hours to decide if the two will marry or call off the whole relationship.

It's almost impossible to spoil the big revelations here. Firstly, they're too obvious, because of course Howard is married to Grace and Sam is married to Monica, while Michelle is the first couple's kid and Allen is the son of the latter pairing. Secondly, the whole thing is about getting all six of these characters, with their various and unwitting entanglements, into the same space, in order to see what kind of hijinks will unfold. Jacobs takes his sweet time getting to the meet-up, with repetitive scenes that continually re-establish the simplistic characterizations—hopeless romantics Michelle and Sam, nervous-about-getting-caught Grace and Howard, cynical Allen and Monica—and the potential for conflict.

Even with everyone in the same house, Jacobs keeps delaying realizations, such as having Sam scurry across the street before Grace notices him, and actually doing anything with the connections once the characters understand the extent of the mess in which they're involved. There's plenty of comedic potential here, either of the uncomfortable or the screwball variety, but Maybe I Do wastes it all, along with this impressively assembled cast, on making promises it either has no intention of keeping or doesn't know how to keep.

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