Movie Review: Maybe I Do (2023)

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Director: Michael Jacobs

Starring: Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere, William H. Macy, Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey

Running Time: 95 minutes

Synopsis: Michelle (Emma Roberts) gives her long-term boyfriend Allen (Luke Bracey) 24 hours to commit to marriage. Michelle's parents Howard and Grace (Richard Gere and Diane Keaton) then invite Allen's parents Sam and Monica (William H. Macy and Susan Sarandon) for dinner, exposing the four-month affair between Howard and Monica and the one-night friendship between Grace and Sam. Multiple discussions about commitments ensue.

What Works Well: The stellar cast maintains a base level of interest, with Emma Roberts and William H. Macy most engaged. The script at least dares to break away from most of the standard rom-com genre cliches.

What Does Not Work As Well: Michael Jacobs adapts his own play, but the material as presented is ill-suited to the screen. Confined to theatrical sets, the characters repetitively - and endlessly - explore the viability of long-term relationships, the courage required to leap into marriage, and the risk of familiarity yielding to staleness. The unconvincing dialogue never sounds credible and circles the same drain for 95 minutes. The wild coincidences of the parent couples' illicit liaisons ultimately add nothing of consequence.

Conclusion: Too much ardent talk, not enough genuine substance.



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Movie Review: About Fate (2022)

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Director: Maryus Vaysberg

Starring: Emma Roberts, Thomas Mann

Running Time: 100 minutes

Synopsis: Singles Margot (Emma Roberts) and Griffin (Thomas Mann) live close to each other but are otherwise strangers. With New Year's Eve approaching, Margot is crushed when her boyfriend Kip (Lewis Tan) breaks up with her instead of proposing. Griffin is equally disappointed when his girlfriend Clementine (Madelaine Petsch), an influencer, is only interested in monetizing his marriage proposal. Margot and Griffin accidentally meet, and a romance sparks when they jointly attend the wedding of Margot's sister Carrie (Britt Robertson).

What Works Well: Emma Roberts (as a perpetually disorganized real estate agent) and Thomas Mann (as a goofy lawyer) create an appealing couple with endearing chemistry. Writer Tiffany Paulson and director Maryus Vaysberg approach the remake of a Soviet-era tele-film with breezy detachment, allowing off-kilter situations (Griffin accidentally naked in Margot's bed; a fight at a wedding) to generate good chuckles. The production values are on the sparkly side of artificial.

What Does Not Work As Well: The story elements barely rise above the standard of a Hallmark channel machine-fabricated movie. Nothing comes close to resembling realism, with all situations and character actions and reactions contrived to serve the script. The couple's final complication on the pathway to happiness is especially poorly handled. 

Conclusion: Overcomes genre conventions with amiable charm.



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Movie Review: We're The Millers (2013)

A raunchy comedy, We're The Millers finds good laughs in a story of strangers coming together as a family for all the wrong reasons.

In Denver, Dave Clark (Jason Sudeikis) is the friendly neighbourhood marijuana dealer. After tangling with local thugs, his cache of weed and money is stolen leaving him in debt to snarky supplier Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms). As payback, Brad pressures Dave into accepting a drug smuggling assignment to transport marijuana from Mexico into the United States.

To deflect suspicions Dave fabricates a family and recruits stripper Rose (Jennifer Aniston), awkward neighbour Kenny (Will Poulter), and street kid Casey (Emma Roberts) as his wife, son and daughter respectively. They head to Mexico in an RV and en route meet RV vacationers Don and Edie Fitzgerald (Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn) and their daughter Melissa (Molly Quinn). Not unexpectedly, Dave does not have much of a plan, and nothing on the trip will go according to any plan.

Adopting a freewheeling style with plenty of improvisation, We're The Millers hits the mark at least as often as it misses. In many ways a foul-mouthed and twisted companion piece to Robin Williams' RV (2006), here director Rawson Marshall Thurber uses the drug smuggling plot as a jumping off point to shove a group of lonely and caustic people into a confined space and then hurl them into a wild adventure.

Dave, Rose, Kenny and Casey are used to being alone, and pretending to be a family is an immediate uphill battle. Having to do so while fooling drug barons in Mexico and suspicious guards at the border only adds to the fun. Of course they will eventually grow as people and come together as a family, but not before some quite hilarious moments, most designed to blow past any limits of decency.

The gangly Kenny is often in the middle of the best moments, proving himself an unlikely rapper before receiving potentially scandalous kissing lessons. The interactions with the Fitzgerald family just get better and weirder, with Dave and Rose stumbling into much more than they bargained during an in-the-tent highlight. And Jennifer Aniston lets loose and has fun with a stripping routine to distract a couple of real and ruthless drug smugglers doggedly pursuing Dave's unexpectedly large haul.

As can be expected some sequences fall flat, and the late introduction of amusement park ride attendant Scottie P adds an unnecessary new character and prolongs the length to a generous 110 minutes. Despite the mishaps, We're The Millers does not pretend to be anything other than what it is, a romp across the border looking for as much ear-poking trouble as possible.



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Movie Review: Nerve (2016)

A teen-oriented thriller, Nerve explores the exhilarating excitement and lurking risks of the online world.

In Staten Island, Vee (Emma Roberts) is approaching her high school graduation with a reputation for playing it safe. She cannot gather up the courage to talk to her crush, and does not dare express to her protective mother Nancy (Juliette Lewis) her desire to accept a position at a California college. In contrast, Vee's best friend Sydney (Emily Meade) is an outgoing vivacious cheerleader.

Seeking to break out of her shell, Vee joins the Nerve on-line game, where Players earn money and ranking points by completing dares posed to them by Watchers. She teams up with fellow Player Ian (Dave Franco), and the initial dares are easy and harmless enough. But as the couple climb the rankings and gain Watchers, Vee is sucked in by the thrill and euphoria. The dares become more dangerous, a serious rift develops with Sydney, and Vee realizes she is stuck in a deadly serious situation.

The smooth addictiveness of social media, whether to anonymously view and like content or create, influence and gain followers and notoriety, receives appropriately glitzy treatment. Jessica Sharzer's script, adapting Jeanne Ryan's book, is often clever and always brisk, quickly setting the premise then unleashing madness through the events of one night, highlighting the baffling speed of fame in the digital age.

After the initial rush and once Vee and Ian pair up, Nerve does hit a dull-ish middle, where the dares are samey, Vee and Ian zooming on his motorcycle this way then that, and some antics consuming an inordinate amount of screen time. Dares then creep into dances with death, and Nerve clunkily shifts moods into suspense territory. 

Although the world of teenagers can be a succession of emotional whiplashes, Sharzer handles human relationships with less elegance than the digital metaphors. The friendship between Vee and Sydney oscillates wildly, while quiet hacker Tommy (Miles Heizer), who has a secret crush on Vee, is emotionally stranded for most of the film. Vee's mom is equally abandoned in frazzled territory, Juliette Lewis wasted in the role.

But dazzling visuals compensate for the lack of human depth. Co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman play on two artistic scales, mainly deploying a slick and polished nighttime look with tech overlays to meld the digital and real worlds. But they also occasionally revive 1990s early internet era signposts, including font styles, crude graphics, boxy monitors, robo voices, and spam pop-up ads, all enhancing the diabolism of a cobbled-together open-source dark web game with no central control.

Nerve roars towards a hastily packaged but still potent call to re-discover the humanity obscured by keyboard anonymity. It's an audacious idea, but also an almost quaint call to roll back time.



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Movie Review: Holidate (2020)

A standard romantic comedy, Holidate features a cute but familiar couple trapped in the genre's well-worn formula.

Sloane (Emma Roberts) is approaching her thirties and with her two siblings already hitched, she is feeling the pressure to find a partner. Her mother Elaine (Frances Fisher) is eager to help, but her lustful aunt Susan (Kristin Chenoweth) keeps herself busy with a series of oddball dates. 

After a disastrous Christmas family gathering, Sloane meets hunky and single Jackson (Luke Bracey) at a gift-return line-up. Both careful not to commit, she calls him a loser and he labels her unattractive. They nevertheless enjoy New Year's Eve together then agree to be each other's platonic dates on every holiday throughout the year. Feelings inevitably develop between them, but making the jump from a friendship of convenience to romantic partners will not be easy.

Despite no shortage of edge, attitude and raunchy humour, Holidate cannot escape being exactly what it struggles against: a generic romantic comedy. Sloane digs in her heels and says all the right things about enjoying the single life and resisting the societal pressure to pair-up just to conform to her family's expectations. But before long the film is all about contrived situations and featherweight obstacles placed in the way of couplehood, Sloane succumbing to exactly what she was railing against.

The Tiffany Paulsen script borrows heavily from sex-driven bawdy comedies, placing undue emphasis on drunkenness, foul language, body parts (including a severed digit) and laxatives triggering inopportune toilet escapades. Some of the episodes are funny, but director John Whitesell cannot overcome a sense of desperation to find any source of laughs to hide the sheer blandness of the material. The entire final third is a protracted will she or won't she commit rehash of trite cliches.

The flimsiness extends to character definitions. Sloane works from home and Jackson is a golf pro, but no one here appears to genuinely earn a living. Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey should both be better than the material, Roberts in particular carrying a sense of tired cynicism that applies to both her character and the project. The supporting cast is entertaining, Kristin Chenoweth fully invested as the colourful aunt seeking a succession of joyfully asymmetrical dates. Manish Dayal has fun as the doctor who shows up in odd places.

Holidate hops from one holiday to another over the course of a year, missing out on the reality where merriment is earned.



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Movie Review: Who We Are Now (2017)

A drama about second chances, Who We Are Now is a finely crafted study of women striving for better.

One year after being released from prison, Beth (Julianne Nicholson) is trying to secure custody of her child Alec. She served 10 years for manslaughter, and Alec was raised by her sister Gabby (Jess Weixler). Carl (Jimmy Smits) runs a budget law firm specializing in representing prisoners, but during the custody mediation process Gabby stands firm and refuses to grant additional visitation rights, Beth's inflammatory behaviour not helping her cause.

Jess (Emma Roberts) works for Carl and takes an interest in Beth's case while also trying to help prisoner Maria secure a spot in a high school completion program. Meanwhile Jess is navigating a fraught relationship with her theatrical mother Alana (Lea Thompson), and Beth meets army veteran Peter (Zachary Quinto) for a one-night stand or more.

An independent production set in Brooklyn, Who We Are Now elegantly weaves together the narratives of two women navigating redemption and justice obstacle courses. Writer and director Matthew Newton embraces realism and settles for no easy answers, the film dropping in on lives-in-progress and gaining momentum through the daily twists and turns accompanying a quest for determined self-improvement and an idealistic belief in helping others.

The journeys of Beth and Jess are full of frustrations, cruel set-backs, and testing confrontations. Beth is fixated on regaining regular contact with Alec, sacrificing everything including her dignity to try and secure a better income to upgrade her legal representation. Her biggest battle is against her own history of incarceration, an almost physically visible and permanent mark of disgrace sabotaging her efforts for a better future. Julianne Nicholson haunts the movie with an on-the-edge performance, displaying delicate fragility hiding just behind last-stand toughness.

Meanwhile Jess is young and utopian, finding her way in the world of law for the disenfranchised and radiating enough promise for Carl to fast-track her career. But Jess is chafing under the influence of a mother who smothers with theatricality, and Newton stages the scenes of Jess interacting with her family as a series of noisy overlapping conversations, superficial affection barely concealing barbed resentment. Emma Roberts delivers a grounded performance, embracing her character's gradual understanding of a flawed judicial system capable of merciless gut punches.

And to complete a triangle of characters carrying heavy luggage, Beth's one-night stand with Peter turns into something more, his eyes hiding behind the fog of war experiences but still recognizing the potential for good in Beth.

With no music and a dedication to close-up and intrusive camerawork, Who We Are Now salutes authentic characters with cultured empathy.



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The Movies Of Emma Roberts

All movies starring Emma Roberts and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Blow (2001)

America's Sweethearts (2001, uncredited)

Valentine's Day (2010)

We're The Millers (2013)

Nerve (2016)

Who We Are Now (2017)

Holidate (2020)

About Fate (2022)

Maybe I Do (2023)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.