Definitely, Maybe [Widescreen]

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When the hour gets late and I find myself growing tired while screening a film, romantic dramas are not typically the type of film I will force myself to stay awake and finish to find out what happens at the end of the film. There is always another day and modern home theater devices do such a wonderful job of bookmarking where a viewer stops and restarting from exactly that point in the film. Such was not the case with "Definitely, Maybe." I was having a long day and decided I needed to watch a relatively short comedy to just find a little cheer in the day. I popped in "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," as I have never seen the film and I was curious. I enjoyed the little comedy and found myself not tired enough to call it a night. "Definitely, Maybe" had been backed up a couple days in the review queue, so I figured I might as well start to watch it and finish it the next day.

At about the fifty minute mark in the film, the laws of nature started to catch up to me and I began to get tired. It was almost 1:30am and having to get up at 6:30am for work makes staying up much later a rough proposition. However, I found myself quite interested in the unorthodox romantic film "Definitely, Maybe" and wanted to find out who little girl Maya Hayes´ (Abigail Breslin) mommy was. As her father Will (Ryan Reynolds) told her the story of his previous loves Emily (Elizabeth Banks), Summer (Rachel Weisz) and April (Isla Fisher) and how he had fallen in love with each of them to answer the little girl´s question of how her father fell in love with her mother; I found myself captivated. I was damn tired, but I definitely did not want to wait eighteen hours or so to discover the ending.

In the film, Will has received divorce papers from his wife. He is separated from her, but the news of the divorce seems disheartening to Will. He picks his daughter Maya up from school twice a week and keeps her for the night. On the night in which he receives his legal papers to sign and finalize the divorce, Maya asks her father to tell her the story of how he fell in love with her mother. Maya doesn´t want to see her parents apart and after discovering about the birds and the bees at her school, she is very curious as to how her parents met, fell in love and is hoping that perhaps having her father tell her the story will ignite a spark that might keep her parents together. Will agrees to tell her the story, but he tells his daughter that he will keep the women´s names different so she must guess which woman is her mother.

Three women have been part of Will´s life in the past before and the film takes place mostly in flashback, with a few scenes showing Will and Maya talking about the story. There is the obligatory happy ending that takes place after Will´s story ends and lets Maya learn the story of her mother and the woman that Will has always loved. The first woman is his college sweetheart Emily. The relationship between Will and Emily seemed almost picture perfect until Will took a position in Bill Clinton´s presidential campaign and he was forced to move to New York City to work on the campaign. Emily feels that living in the big city will change the small town boy and she is correct in her assumption. Distance and time apart has effects on people and this first love ends without marriage.

The second woman that gains Will´s heart is Emily´s former roommate Summer Hartley, who is a talented writer, but in love with college professor Hampton Roth (Kevin Kline). Emily had given Will a package to drop off, but Will and his roommate Russell (Derek Luke) opened the brown-wrapped package to discover a diary that detailed romantic occurrences between Summer and Emily. Will arrives to drop the diary off, but finds Hampton and believes the older man to be Summer´s father. They drink heavily and Will is then kissed by the curious Summer. With each finding romantic feelings for the other, Will and Summer eventually engage in a very serious relationship, but her job as a journalist and Will´s working as a campaign manager class and Summer too does not become the wife of Will.

The third and final woman introduced to Maya as a possible mother is April. She works as the copy girl for Clinton´s campaign and her and Will quickly find themselves to be idealistic rivals who cannot seem to agree on anything. They, however, find a friendship and when April is stood up by her boyfriend on her birthday, Will becomes a proxy date. He practices his proposal for Emily on April and it moves her to respond ´definitely, maybe.´ Later in the evening, they share a kiss, but quickly distance themselves from each other. Through the course of Will´s story he and April share a close and deep friendship and each shows romantic feelings for the other, but their timing is never quite right and when Will finally declares his love for her, the results are disastrous.

Up until a party that Summer throws years after Will had broken up with each of the women, the film keeps both Maya and the audience guessing as to whom the little girl´s mother is and which woman ultimately married Will. There are possibilities that either Emily, Summer or April is Will´s soon-to-be ex-wife, but the connection as to whom he married is not provided in his story until one of the three ladies and Will reconcile and a small mention of the woman´s mannerisms reveals to Maya which one is her mother. However, upon discovering the identity of her mother in Will´s story and learning the whole history of her father´s loves, Maya finds that her father does not belong with her mother, but one of the other girls in his story.

When everything is revealed, I had already a good idea of which woman was the ideal partner for Will and which woman his heart truly belonged to. I wasn´t sure of which of the three was Maya´s mother and that mystery kept me engaged in the story and I was also curious as to why Will and the lady in question were getting divorced. The film masterfully revealed the identity of his ex-wife, but reasons as to why the marriage has dissolved was never quite uncovered. One could assume that it was because Will´s heart was elsewhere and I´m going to stick with that notion. The provided wrap-up to the story allowed the film to end on a very happy note instead of having poor Will having his heart torn out by a woman he had loved and married.

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