May Def, Milestone Day, morris dance, mean distance, mister disaster, million dollar, must die

All right, so there’s this movie that opens today called Definitely, Maybe that had one of the worst trailers I have ever seen in my life. I mean, fairly frequently, my Best Reader or I will respond to a trailer by naming the amount of money we would need to be paid to sit through the full movie, but this was … priceless. I felt as if I had already sat through the whole movie by the end of the trailer.

The plot, which was extensively detailed in the trailer, is that there’s the fellow, and his daughter, and she’s all precocious and cute and all, and is starting to ask uncomfortable questions about sex and love. So to distract her, he tells her the story of how he met her mother. Only—this is the clever part—instead of actually telling that story, he will tell her three stories, about three women that he met, obscuring their identities, and she will have to guess which one is her mother. Doesn’t that seem as natural as all get out?

The mother, bye-the-bye, isn’t dead. Why would you think she was dead? No, the family is just undergoing a brutal and bitter divorce. Ha, ha. What fun! Nothing like a little family law to make a rom-com sparkle.

Anyway, within the movie are three romantic stories, with three different actresses playing names-have-been-changed-to-protect-the-people-who-will-undoubtedly​-have-to-give​-depositions-in-the-visitation​-rights-matter-and-I-hope-to-Betsy​-that-they’ve-lawyered-up, and neither the audience nor the girl knows which woman will be the True Love (until the papers are served).

So, fine. It’s not the worst movie ever made. The worst movie ever made may well be Kate and Leopold. The thing that makes the whole idea of this flick tolerable is the obvious plot twist that at the end, all three of the women are her mother, that people grow and change, that he fell in love with her all over again and over again and over again, very sweet, Happy Arizona Statehood Day.

Only none of the reviews I’ve skimmed appear to hint that there is a plot twist at all. So either they are being very discreet or the film-makers have missed the only possible point to the movie. And the thing is that I have no easy way of telling which is the case without actually seeing the movie, which as I say is not to be contemplated. So, if some Gentle Reader wants to take one for the team, all I’m saying is, better you than me.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

6 thoughts on “May Def, Milestone Day, morris dance, mean distance, mister disaster, million dollar, must die

  1. ruthling

    OMG was that one of the worst trailers I’d ever seen. I think, on seeing it the second time I remarked that someone would have to pay me $50 to sit through the trailer again. Therefore, I am relieved that it has come out and can sink all by itself.

    The Glob kind of liked it.

    your twist would make it slightly less awful, although the real problem is the tweeness of the child in it. ::shuddder::

    Reply
  2. Michael

    I thought the twist was that he wasn’t actually getting divorced from the mother, but from the step-mother, and the daughter has to guess which one of the three women was her actual mother who ran off when the daughter was two and has now come back and is the reason for the divorce.

    Reply
  3. Michael

    No, that’s not right, the actual twist is that the three women were all affairs he had, which is why the mother is divorcing him, and the daughter has to choose which one of these women she’d like as a step-mother.

    But then it turns out that he’s kidding, because really he’s been sleeping with their husbands.

    Reply
  4. Matthew

    I must dissent. The worst movie ever made was Total Eclipse. I think it one of the Great Injustices of the Universe that not only did this terrible movie fail to nip Leonardo Dicaprio’s career in the bud as it should have, but David Thewlis, who is a much better actor by several orders of magnitude, never recovered from it. The best he has done since then career-wise was Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies.

    Reply
  5. Vardibidian

    Thank you for the warning on Total Eclipse, which I might well have seen, one day. I had read about a production of the play (in Simon Callow’s bio?) and was vaguely interested in the play, so it’s always possible I would have picked up the movie at some point.

    Speaking of Mr. Thewlis, however, there is a film of Endgame with Mr. Thewlis and Michael Gambon that is part of the Beckett on Film series. If you are keen on his stuff (either Mr. Thewlis or Mr. Beckett or for that matter the magnificent Mr. Gambon) it is worth seeing.

    Thanks,
    -V.

    Reply

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