Maybe you'll want to skip "Maybe I Do."
The comedy's lure is its four leads and, if you're over 50, you're probably a fan of at least one of them. They're involved in separate stories that link up in a way you can guess but that I won't spoil.
Diane Keaton plays Grace, who drifts into a flirty friendship that could be a romance with tentative Sam (William H. Macy). Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon play Howard and Monica, whose once-torrid affair is drawing to a close. Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey also pop in as Michelle and Allen, who plan to marry but have some qualms.
Writer/director Michael Jacobs, a sitcom veteran, is trying for something in a Nancy Meyers vein, a rueful comedy in which everyone has tons of money, fabulous kitchens they don't use and wardrobes full of clothes that enable them to be overdressed for every event, up to and including checking into no-tell motels.
Only Keaton has been in an actual Meyers movie: the superior "Something's Gotta Give." But all of these actors can do this sort of thing, which they prove in the final scenes, which verge on frenzied, door-slamming farce in a way that feels entertainingly old-fashioned.
What doesn't feel so fun is the way Jacobs reduces the characters to one or two characteristics.
That works OK for Keaton and Macy, who bring specific vibes (skittishly adorable/mildly baffled) to virtually every part they play and who have a weird, compelling energy in their scenes together. But the placid Gere needs more to work with and Sarandon could probably file a defamation suit against the person who decided she's the perfect actor to play a rich, vile narcissist who has nothing good to say about anyone but says it all anyway. Sarandon's character is so relentlessly mean-spirited that when Jacobs inevitably tries to redeem her, there's been too much bile under the bridge for that to work.
Roberts and Bracey are fine but nobody is going to "Maybe I Do" to see them or their boring Netflix rom-com knockoff characters. In fact, it's a little hard to imagine who will go to it at all.
While it's swell that these actors are getting roles and heartening that "Maybe I Do" acknowledges that older people remain sexual beings, all four leads have been in better projects that made that same point.
If I were you, I'd maybe rent "Book Club," "Something's Gotta Give," "Shameless," "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" or "Blackbird" instead of going to "Maybe I Do."
———
'MAYBE I DO'
2 stars (out of 4)
Rated: PG-13 (for sexually suggestive material and brief strong language)
Running time: 1:35
How to watch: In theaters Friday
———
