Maybe I Do Parent Guide

Allen (Luke Bracey) and Michelle (Emma Roberts) have had a lovely, stable, healthy relationship for years. The problem? Michelle wants to get married. Allen is terrified that marriage will destroy the relationship they already have. Unable to make a decision, the young couple go off to get advice from their parents – which is where we run into another problem.

Michelle’s father, Howard (Richard Gere), and Allen’s mother, Monica (Susan Sarandon), have been having an affair for about four months – an affair which Howard wants to end. Meanwhile, Michelle’s mother, Grace (Diane Keaton), and Allen’s father, Sam (William H. Macy), ran into one another by chance and spent all night talking and flirting. This messy situation is going to get worse: Allen and Michelle have never introduced their parents to one another, and they decide now is the time. But with the tangled web of emotional and physical adultery enmeshing the two families, now might not be the best time for a big family dinner.

After seeing IMDB’s 4.9 rating on this film, I was concerned, but it’s not as bad as I feared. I’m not going to say it’s good, but the movie settles into a level of saccharine mediocrity that manages to be as inoffensive as it is boring. There are some stronger patches, but they’re just patches, and soon you’re back to another stale-dated rom-com about marriage and ageing.

With a cast like this, there are inevitably some good moments. Susan Sarandon, in particular, seems to be having a grand old time sweeping about in fur coats and scaring everyone she sees, and William H. Macy is just so darn endearing – no small feat in a film where almost every character is an adulterer or a moron. Diane Keaton, on the other hand, seems almost lost, and I never really figured out what she was doing with the character.

With a PG-13 rating, you know the movie isn’t going to get into too much trouble, but even at this rating there’s not much explicit material. The elephant in the room is all the adultery happening around you, but it mostly occurs on the periphery out of shot. There’s a moderate amount of social drinking among adults, some brief sexual language, and a few shots of characters in their underwear. No drug use, little cussing (making the single sexual expletive an anomaly), and no violence. The real price you pay for watching this movie is sitting around wondering whether there’s a nice young man in scrubs looking for Diane Keaton in some facility somewhere. I sincerely hope not, but if there is, I hope he finds her soon.