Definitely, Maybe

Definitely, Maybe (2008) starts with a man in the middle of a divorce talking to his daughter. She asks how he met her mother. He agrees to tell her about three women but changes their names, so she has to work out which one is her mother. The film runs as a game of recollection. What the structure buys is that the audience knows exactly as much as the daughter. What a romantic comedy normally announces at the start becomes a puzzle here, set against the politics of the nineties; the story begins on the Clinton campaign in 1992. Adam Brooks wrote and directed. Ryan Reynolds plays the father and Abigail Breslin the daughter. The three women are Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz. For Reynolds it is one of the few roles that sits apart from his action and comedy work. It runs 112 minutes. Good for: romantic comedy, unusual narrative structures, and nineties America. Less good for: the puzzle becomes guessable past a point, and all three women serve the father's development. Divorce is treated seriously and then closed too easily.