"Maybe I Do" a beige, overwritten, contrived nothing of a movie with a great cast

Maybe I Do (2023)

“Maybe I Do” is a reminder that even a great cast can be let down by awkward direction and a vapid script. Beige, slackly paced, annoyingly overwritten, artificial, and often uncomfortably unfunny, this romantic dramedy plays like a James L. Brooks movie that just never clicks. Writing and directing his own play for the screen, Michael Jacobs (remember “Quiz Show” from 1994?) has attracted an enticing ensemble, including four reliable veteran actors, some of who share on-screen reunions (i.e. Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon played husband and wife in 2004’s “Shall We Dance?”). One just wants better material for all of them.

Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey, who also already shared sparks in 2020’s likably raunchy “Holidate,” play unmarried couple Michelle and Allen. At a friend’s wedding ceremony, Michelle stands to catch the bouquet, but Allen makes a spectacle and lunges for it, leading to Michelle giving Allen an ultimatum about their entire relationship. Her parents, Howard (Richard Gere) and Grace (Diane Keaton), are on the rocks but keep up a front of a healthy marriage while Michelle stays with them. Howard has been having an affair with Monica (Susan Sarandon); he wants to end it, and she promises to kill him if he does. Meanwhile, Grace ends up spending the night just talking in a cheap motel room with a bucket of fried chicken and a six-pack of Fresca with Sam (William H. Macy), a stranger she meets in a movie theater who also happens to be Monica’s sadsack husband. When Michelle forces Allen to have him and his parents over for dinner to finally meet her parents, Monica and Sam turn out to be Allen’s parents. What are the odds? What could possibly go wrong? 

It’s a major plot contrivance to get these three couples in the same house, or just a really small world. For what feels like a stage play anyway, this could have been a bedroom farce where the central dinner scene was the entire movie. Instead, this thin but windy script lets its characters talk and talk and talk before we even get to that wacky situation, and none of it is substantial or worth repeating. Speaking of “characters,” these people barely register; they clearly don’t have jobs, friends, or hobbies (okay, Grace knits) because keeping a relationship afloat is the only topic of conversation they really have. To waste our time even more, it becomes pretty difficult to care if anyone stays together.

In terms of Michael Jacobs’ direction, scenes go on for far too long without any of the characters’ conversations adding up to anything insightful or conclusive. Also, Diane Keaton is a lovely comedienne, and she can play batty in her sleep, but she is too often directed to act stiff and like a ninny as Grace. In one particularly embarrassing moment when Grace is watching a televised church service in her kitchen, she keeps fidgeting and talking back to the TV as the preacher talks about committing adultery. Even her husband Howard walks in, hears the word “adultery,” and tiptoes right back out. It’s moments like these that strain to be zany, and instead, they just miss the mark to a cringe-inducing degree.

Maybe it's a matter of expectations and high standards. Sure, “Maybe I Do” is airy, innocuous fare with actors you like and will continue to like, but it’s such a nothing of a movie; at least a trifle can have flavor. The only performers bringing any kind of gusto or genuine vulnerability are Susan Sarandon and William H. Macy. She does get to play the sexpot of the bunch, but Sarandon is having the most fun and that energy becomes contagious in spurts. Otherwise, this is a frustrating waste of everyone’s abilities. To think that these overqualified actors chose this project over anything else is just depressing.

Grade: D +

Vertical is releasing “Maybe I Do” (95 min.) in theaters January 27, 2023.