Page 3 of 5
DEFINITELY, MAYBE When it comes to a worthy romantic comedy, Definitely, Maybe certainly isn't fool's gold (or Fool's Gold) – on the contrary, it's the real deal, a diamond in the rough that could use some polishing but overall sparkles with warmth and wit. Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin (suddenly more overexposed than fellow moppet Dakota Fanning) plays Maya Hayes, a precocious child whose parents are getting divorced. While staying with her father Will (Ryan Reynolds), Maya begs to hear how he and her mother met, so he turns the bedtime story into a mystery, changing all the names and leaving Maya to guess which of the women from his past ended up becoming his wife. As he details his escapades during the early 1990s – as a fledgling political consultant for the Clinton campaign – he presents three possibilities: his college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks), his campaign co-worker April (Isla Fisher), and his reporter friend Summer (Rachel Weisz). By casting three comparably drop-dead-gorgeous actresses in sympathetic and intelligent roles, writer-director Adam Brooks keeps the mystery going longer than might be expected; still, the focus isn't on the identity of Mom as much as it's on Will's romantic travails as he keeps sorting out his shifting feelings for these women as they repeatedly enter his life over the years. Affable Reynolds manages to keep pace with his gifted leading ladies, while an unbilled Kevin Kline makes a welcome appearance as a literary boozehound with an eye for young college girls. ***
FOOL'S GOLD Lord, what fools these Hollywood mortals be! Here they further denigrate the standing of the romantic comedy by presenting this waterlogged flick about bickering ex-spouses on the prowl for sunken treasure off the Florida Keys. In a reunion that no one was exactly clamoring for, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days co-stars Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson play Finn and Tess; he's an irresponsible beach bum who's skilled at running up debts, while she's a level-headed lass who's forced to take a job on the yacht of millionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland). Despite finalizing their divorce mere hours earlier, Finn talks Tess into joining him once again on his never-ending quest for 18th century Spanish booty; they persuade Honeycutt to finance their endeavor, but they're working against the clock since murderous rapper-turned-mobster Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart) also has designs on the riches. Eye candy abounds in Fool's Gold: Many women will enjoy the sight of McConaughey taking off his shirt at regular intervals, some men will gaze at the bronzed Hudson sporting teeny bikinis, and ocean lovers (that would include me) can ignore the lame plot at the forefront in favor of concentrating on the shimmering beauty of the water (a modest saving grace also found in After the Sunset and Into the Blue). But the direction (by Hitch's Andy Tennant) is uninspired, the script is bubbleheaded, and the bland leads continue to disprove the notion that some measure of movie-star charisma is required to make it as a romantic draw. Old pro Sutherland provides some lift, but the real spark comes from Alexis Dziena as Honeycutt's trust-fund daughter; she takes the tired character of the young ditz and miraculously makes her funny. *1/2
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS / PERSEPOLIS This year's Academy Awards race may be over, but expect the controversy surrounding the group's Best Foreign Language Film category to continue. After a record 63 countries each submitted a picture for consideration in this year's contest, the members of the Academy's foreign language film committee – mainly, older and more conservative voters who have time to watch all these movies – pared the list down to nine, from which the five nominees were selected. Astonishingly, that list of nine didn't include two highly praised titles: Romania's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and France's Persepolis (which did manage to snag a Best Animated Feature nod). Perhaps the finalists were all better than either movie – it's impossible to say at this point, considering none have played Charlotte – but given the Academy's absurd, decades-stretching rules governing this category – nonsensical guidelines that have kept such gems as Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Claude Berri's Jean de Florette and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs trilogy out of the running – that's hardly a given. At any rate, Academy heads promise an investigation of the current process. As for this neglected pair, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a dark drama about an unexpected pregnancy that flies in the face of far sunnier pictures like Juno and Knocked Up; set in Romania during the 1980s, it centers on the efforts of a woman (Anamaria Marinca) to help her friend (Laura Vasiliu) secure an illegal abortion. The animated Persepolis, meanwhile, charts the exploits of a young girl as she comes of age in Iran in the years surrounding the revolution (out with the Shah, in with the Ayatollah Khomeini). Both films focus on women coping with unimaginable hardships while living under oppressive regimes, and both are comparably memorable. Both films: ***
