Movie Review: 'May Be I Do' is Completely Awful

Maybe I Do (2023)

Directed by Michael Jacobs

Written by Michael Jacobs

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

Release Date January 27th, 2023

Published January 27th, 2023

Somewhere there is a dusty shelf that someone was cleaning that hadn't been cleaned since 1994. On that shelf was a script for a truly awful romantic comedy called Maybe I Do. To whomever failed to leave this script on that dusty, forgotten shelf you are to blame for this, y0u are a truly cruel human being. The script for Maybe I Do belongs on an ash heap, not on a big screen. This insipid throwback to awful boomer politics of the time when their opinion of popular culture mattered, Maybe I Do is a relic of a time when men made jokes about hating their wives and wives joked about their husband's inability to satisfy them sexually. Ugh!

That this insipid film stars Diane Keaton is seemingly inevitable. The once great actress has an uncanny ability to find the absolute worst movies that play to her worst instincts as an actress. How a woman with this much talent manages to choose the worst movies is some kind of cosmic joke. Keaton's last 20 plus years include some of the worst movies of this young century and Maybe I Do belongs to that epic, awful canon of the worst of the worst.

In Maybe I Do, Diane Keaton plays a married woman whose idea of lying to her husband, Richard Gere, is going to the movies by herself. Meanwhile, her terrible husband is off having sex with his sort of mistress played by Susan Sarandon. Gere hates Sarandon and lets her know that in no uncertain terms. She still wants to have sex with him. When he finally decides to end things with her, basically stating how much he hates her over and over, Sarandon says she will kill him if she sees him again. Plot point!

Meanwhile, while at her elicit movie, Keaton meets a sadsack played by an actor who embodies that term all too well, Wiilliam H. Macy. Seeing Macy crying his eyes out over whatever movie they were watching; Keaton takes pity to comfort him. This leads them to spend the evening together but not in the way you think. They do go and get a hotel but it's only so that they can watch TV, eat fried chicken, and talk about the misery of their lives with their miserable spouses.

You get no points for guessing that Keaton's spouse is Gere and that Macy's spouse is Sarandon. Making this convoluted nonsense even more convoluted is the other plot of Maybe I Do. At a wedding between their closest friends, Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey appear to be a very happy couple. Then, Bracey sees Roberts about to catch the bouquet and he loses his ever-loving mind. Racing across the room, he leaps off of a table and catches the bouquet right out of his girlfriend's hands.

Naturally, this doesn't sit well with Roberts who storms out of the wedding and seemingly ends her relationship with Bracey. Then again, if she actually did that, the thing she should have done, we would not have this dopey movie. For you see, dear reader, Bracey is the son of Macy and Sarandon and Roberts is the daughter of Gere and Keaton. The whole family has to get together for awkward, unfunny, cringe scenes in which the men posture, everyone insults Susan Sarandon, and Diane Keaton wanders around so confused she can't understand simple concepts.

All of these characters are completely useless, unfunny and filled with loathing for one another. They hate each other and that feeling translates to us, they are impossible for us to like just as much. The older couples keep going on about how miserable they are, how there is no such thing as love and life ends when you turn 60. These characters are miserable and when they are suddenly then required to turn at the end and find new meaning in life and love, it just feels empty and false.

Maybe I Do is another worst of the year candidate starring Diane Keaton. Every year around this time it's time for Diane Keaton to release another movie that completely buries whatever legend she once had. She appears lost on screen these days, her characters are scatterbrained to the point where we feel more concerned about her than entertained. Richard Gere could not be more checked out. Macy and Sarandon are trying but they are undone by scripting and direction that's nearly as miserable as these characters.

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