Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Maybe I Do’ on Hulu, A Rom-Com Trying To Capture That Nancy Meyers Magic

This week on White People Bickering Comedically in $75,000 Kitchens Theatre is Maybe I Do (now on Hulu), a comedy of manners starring Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere, William H. Macy and Diane Keaton as arguing affluents whose marriages are in the shitter, and aren’t sure if they should flush or what. It’s written and directed by Michael Jacobs, a veteran TV producer who based the film on his play Cheaters and seems heavily influenced by the likes of Nancy Meyers and James L. Brooks. Fifteen or 20 years ago, that cast would’ve made our funny bones explode, because this type of ensemble comedy was at its peak performance powers, but now such movies are cast into the streaming pits and left to flounder – although this one might just deserve that fate.

MAYBE I DO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Sam (Macy) blubbers so loudly into his bucket of popcorn and Twizzlers and peanut M&Ms, it’s disrupting the other moviegoers. Most people are annoyed, but Grace (Keaton) is an empathetic sort who realizes the guy might just want someone to sit next to. They end up sitting on a bench together after the movie and having a comical encounter at a sleazy motel that they back out of before going to get a bucket of chicken and some Frescas before deciding they want to do the sleazy motel thing anyway. They check in and put their wedding rings in the drawer, and Grace decides she doesn’t want the bible to be in the room so she takes it outside. It’s all rather awkward and charming, because they seem like nice, thoughtful, sweet people who aren’t used to whatever this is they’re doing.

Elsewhere. Monica (Sarandon) wants to jump the living crap out of Howard’s (Gere) bones. They’re in a fancy hotel. They’re two strong personalities, confident and more than a little cynical. They’ve done this before – they’re four months into whatever this is they’re doing – but they’re not going to do it tonight. He’s over it. Howard resists Monica’s charms, perhaps a little too easily, and walks out. Elsewhere elsewhere, Michelle (Emma Roberts) and Allen (Luke Bracey) are a bridesmaid and a groomsman at a wedding. They’re already a couple and have been for however long – long enough that she’s getting the itch to move beyond simple cohabitation. She and the bride planned it all out: Michelle’s catching the bouquet. It’s totally rigged. The bride turns around and all the other single women back off and when Michelle catches it Allen will have no choice but to marry her and father her children and they’ll live happily ever after til death do they part – except he pulls a Sauce Gardner and breaks up the pass with a flying Superman leap. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s Complicated but if its title was It’s Vague, or As Good as It Gets if it wasn’t at all close to being that good.

Performance Worth Watching: Macy finds a little bit of traction in his sad-sack cuckold character, delivering the line, “I’m as happy as I’m gonna get” with the type of resonant ache reflecting the hard truth of someone who’s settled for less than he deserves. But it’s rough sledding for everyone – this godawful script leaves this cast pretty much for dead. 

Memorable Dialogue: The script masticates on a metaphor that growing old and stale and bored and stagnant is akin to being “a potato,” which inspires the following exchange:

Sam: Nobody thinks of you as a potato.

Monica: Oh really, what do you think of me as?

Sam: That thing that mashes a potato.

Sex and Skin: Beyond a classic Sarandon scene in which she makes an aggressive pass at a gent, none.

Our Take: I scrunch up my nose at this poorly scripted junkola, which puts a bunch of drivel in the mouths of four wily Hollywood vets. To say they deserve better is gross understatement. Each is given a character that’s a watered-down version of their pre-established screen personae: Macy as a put-upon schlub, Keaton as a dithering airhead, Gere as a lightly saucy gentleman, Sarandon as sharp-tongued maneater. Roberts and Bracey are empty plot devices, defined by this situation and nothing else (do they have jobs? Interests? Quirks? How about personalities? Or just none of the above?). They’re a Problem presented to the other four, prompting them to reflect on their own listing marriages. When Jacobs finally gets them all in the same room standing slackjawed at the god’s-hand coincidence of it all, we don’t note the farcical irony and brace for an explosion – it’s more like a silent fart that slowly makes its way through the room.

Maybe I Do thinks its clever, feeding Sarandon lines like “Til death do us part needed a rewrite after penicillin” and “I’m gonna figure out a way to kill you and get away with it” – she’s done this dozens of times before, with more inspiration than this screenplay offers. Macy gets a moment or two, but Keaton and Gere fade into blankness, finding not a single handhold in the wispy nothingness of this material. It’s embarrassing. And the direction? It’s so cloddish and uninspired, it makes a 1990s made-for-TV movie look like Tenet. I’d wager Jacobs has something to say about love and infidelity, but it’s muddled and blurry, a series of cliches filtered through cardboard characters delivering overwrought bon mots on sets that look like model homes in overpriced suburban developments. That’s the only thing about this movie that works – nobody lives in these houses, because nobody in this movie resembles anything that’s alive.

Our Call: Maybe I Do? More like Maybe I Poo! SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.