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Maybe I Do (M, 95mins) Directed by Michael Jacobs **½
From the man who helped give the world such beloved sitcoms as My Two Dads, Charles in Charge and Dinosaurs, comes a star-studded adaptation of his now more than 45-year-old playwriting debut.
After making its bow in South Florida in the 1977, Cheaters hit Broadway in 1978, making the then 22-year-old Michael Jacobs one of the youngest ever creators of a show to grace New York’s Great White Way.
Unfortunately, the rejigged and retitled Maybe I Do never really transcends some of its more dated conceits and theatrical roots.
All it took was a single moment of madness to send Michelle (Emma Roberts) and Alan’s (Luke Bracey) relationship into turmoil. The former’s dream of catching her best friend’s bridal bouquet ruined by the latter’s ostentatious leap from atop a table (having witnessed something similar once, I can attest the fallout is not pretty).
To Michelle, Alan’s rash actions are symbolic of the feeling she has that their relationship is going nowhere. As she packs her essentials to relocate back home to her parent’s house, she warns Alan he has 24 hours to decide if he’ll marry her. “Anything that isn’t a yes, is a no.”
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Richard Gere and William H. Macy face-off in Maybe I Do.
Not feeling up to being in the apartment by himself, Alan also retreats back to his Ma and Pa, seeking advice on what he should do. But while his mother Monica (a vampy Susan Sarandon) is adamant he shouldn’t cave to Michelle’s demands, father Sam (William H. Macy) thinks it all sounds romantic.
“I think it all sounds like science-fiction,” Monica snaps back. But then those too haven’t exactly been in sync for some time.
Meanwhile, Michelle’s parents Howard (Richard Gere) and Grace (Diane Keaton) are trying to calm their daughter down. Sure that things will work themselves out, they suggest inviting Alan and his olds around for dinner – after all, they’ve never met them in all the years the couple have been dating. Convinced they wouldn’t get on, thanks to their disparate personalities, it’s a situation Michelle and Alan have always tried to avoid.
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Maybe I Do is an adaptation by Michael Jacobs of his own award-winning 1977 play Cheaters.
As they feared, the awkwardness begins from the very moment the doorbell rings and Howard and Monica and Sam and Grace lock eyes. It turns out they’ve met each other before – very recently – and in even more intimate situations.
What follows is a somewhat predictable farce, as the pairings try to conceal their extra-marital rendezvous and eventually air regrets and recriminations in a move towards reconciliation.
While Maybe I Do is not without its charms (most notably Macy’s sad-sack Sam, who gets the lion’s share of the best lines), its drama never really compels and the laughs are a little too few and far between.
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Despite sporting an impressive cast, Maybe I Do never really transcends some of its more dated conceits and theatrical roots.
For more mature viewers, there is a certain frisson in seeing Gere reunited with both his Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Shall We Dance? co-stars, but he never manages to make his character more than a one-dimensional feckless philanderer whose “one-night stand” he’s been trying to get out of for months.
And when Macy proposes fisticuffs, it’s not exactly a scrap to rival Firth vs. Grant in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Great cast, shame about the C-Grade Woody Allen material they’re saddled with.
Maybe I Do is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.
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