The trailer for Definitely, Maybe, opening from Universal on a crowded Valentine’s Day weekend, is up online and in theaters, and it paints a picture of sunny personalities running free through fields of daisies, metaphorically speaking. Written and directed by Adam Brooks, who made 2001’s wretched The Invisible Circus, but also penned Practical Magic, the relatively harmless Wimbledon, and 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the film tells the story of a guy (Ryan Reynolds) who, on the eve of a divorce, tells his daughter (Abigail Breslin) the story of the three women (Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher) with whom he’s had relationships in his life, leaving her (and the audience) trying to guess who her mother is.
We can eliminate Weisz right off the bat, so I’m thinking it has to be Fisher — both because of one fleeting but key revelation in the trailer, and because she’s pegged as the hottest riser of the remaining two. One thing is clear, though: despite being a bit too young (31) to convincingly have a 10- or 11-year-old daughter, the sly charm of Reynolds (witness the swallowed line regarding threesomes) will again be key to this enterprise. The art for the movie’s press kit (and its poster, where horizontal design influence is evident) is billing it as “from the makers of Notting Hill and Love Actually,” and if Definitely, Maybe can capture the varying tonalities of particularly the latter, then it could be a lovely cross-generational and cross-gender mini-hit if Doug Liman’s Jumper fails to catch on.
