Rom-com looks at not-so-cheery topic: loneliness in long marriage
In the romantic comedy “Maybe I Do,” a young couple played by Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey debate whether marriage is in their future. She’s all in; he’s all “What?!”
But this duo might as well be an afterthought. The star attractions are their parents, played by rom-com veterans including Diane Keaton, Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon. Rounding out the foursome is William H. Macy, and you have a quartet of seasoned stars who manage, despite the script’s shortcomings, to generate some light absurdist sparkle and emotional nuance as two late-in-life couples dealing with relationship issues and extramarital dalliances of their own.
At its strongest,
“Maybe I Do” is a cheery look at a not-so-cheery subject: loneliness in a long marriage. It comes from writer and firsttime feature film director Michael Jacobs. What does it look like when you share a home with someone but don’t share your life anymore? When you don’t feel adored — or even seen? When you have a midlife crisis in your 70s and find yourself wondering: Is this all there is?
Romantic comedies are so rarely about this particular stage of life, but the film is too hesitant to actually let these people talk about any of it. There are monologues, but not the kind of back-and-forth that gives you a sense of who these couples were when things weren’t so dire. They’ve been grinning and bearing it for too long, and then suddenly the blister pops, and they can’t ignore it anymore. That’s usually when the real conversations
happen: What now?
Couldn’t tell you, because Jacobs cuts to the final scene. Missing are the kind of hard, vulnerable adult conversations that happen between two people hashing out whether there’s anything left to salvage.
Is the film more interested in the younger couple? No, that’s not the case, either. Roberts and Bracey were romantic leads in 2020’s “Holidate,” and Roberts otherwise has a hefty list of rom-com credits. Teaming them up again should work better than it does, but they’re given so little to play with.
They live together but never discussed tying the knot until now. She’s insistent and with an ultimatum hanging in the air, they go their separate ways for the night to seek counsel from their respective parents. Her mom and dad (Keaton and Gere) decide the solution is to finally meet his mom and dad (Sarandon and Macy).
The point is getting the parents in the same room for some humorously chaotic dysfunction that’s all couples swap — the kind wherein the couples don’t even realize they’ve been swapping until it’s too late and all their secrets are laid out in a buffet of
embarrassments.
Macy and Sarandon’s characters are the tougher sell; he’s wrapped up in delusions that he’s a good man who made a youthful mistake and has been paying for it ever since. Sarandon’s character is positioned as a sex-starved, latter-day version of
“Fatal Attraction,” and it’s conspicuous that no men in her life speak kindly to her for the sin of … not being demure enough?
Gere is the movie’s saving grace, and somehow makes it all seem worth it. He and Keaton worked together with different results in 1977’s “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” so to see them playing a couple who have palpable love for one another, even amid their problems, gives a warm and unexpected frisson to their pairing.
But it’s more than that. Gere is barely suppressing a smile in almost every scene he’s in, bringing an affable “sure, where do ya need me?” vibe to the proceedings.
He is delighted to be here — and we, by extension, are delighted by him.