Six Degrees: Daniel Eric Gold: Definitely, Maybe

Definitely, Maybe (2008)

Daniel Eric Gold played Todd in my last post Cafe and Charlie in today's post Definitely, Maybe.

Synopsis
Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) is in the middle of a divorce when his 10-year-old daughter, Maya, starts to wonder about how he met her mother and his life before his family. So we follow Will and the various characters in his life through his time as a starry-eyed aspiring politician who learns the ways of big city politics. We ride along as he explains to Maya his relationships with three very different women, and Maya decides to try and guess which is her mother (which is fairly entertaining). As Maya puts together the pieces of Will's romantic life puzzle, she shares her wisdom and shows her father, Will, that it is never too late to try and find your happy ending.
Sounds corny, and it probably is. However, Ryan Reynolds and Isla Fisher and Abigail Breslin add their charming wit and sarcastic humor, so it's actually very entertaining.


My Thoughts
Let's get this out of the way: Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, he's in this one. We start the movie listening to his thoughts and inner-monologue. And he has done what we all dream of doing; he has found the perfect song to go along with his day! I try to do this all the time...but they never feel perfect. Well, good for him...Then we get another New York tour montage while he walks to pick up his daughter...Then it gets interesting...

Abigail Bresden (Maya Hayes) and Ryan Reynolds (Will Hayes) make an awesome father-daughter duo. I hope, if I ever have a kid, they can handle my sarcasm as well as she handles his. She dishes it just as much as he does! Anyway, she bullies the "How I Met Your Mother" story out of him, and that's basically the movie. Not quite as long of a story as the TV show, but still fairly complicated and hilarious (mostly because Ryan Reynolds is telling it...). I love how he turns it into a Love Story-Mystery. Guess which one's your mom! Emily (Elizabeth Banks)? Summer (Rachel Weisz)? April (Isla Fisher)?

Daniel Eric Gold (The Six Degrees Character from Cafe) is Charlie, the horrible, moocher roommate who constantly threatens to steal the girlfriend while Will's in New York trying to become president.

A big chunk of the movie is watching Will make his way from coffee boy to political guru. The interruptions from Maya are fairly entertaining, but any time a parent tells a story like this, they're bound to give up more information than they intended...








Is it horrible that I always mix up Isla Fisher with Amy Adams? When I really pay attention, I feel stupid for mixing them up, but their voices and everything are similar...




I love what April says when Will asks what she wants to be when she grows up: "I don't know and I don't know how to know. You know?" That's basically where I am, too. I'm thinking a lot of people can relate to that...

Hampton Roth's book reading is also very enlightening. I'm always afraid that language really is being torn apart and left to die, while we "evolve" into LOLs and JKs...I know I sound like a 70-year-old trying to keep the Internet from cafes, but I think language and vocabulary are important. The more words we lose, I think the less capable we are of expressing ourselves. And the less capable we are of expressing ourselves, the more miscommunications there will be...Anyway, that's my soap box for the day. Back to the movie...






Will is telling his 10 or 11-year-old this story, and yet she still has to explain things to him! Boys can be so stupid sometimes (I mean, girls can, too, but come on!). The brutal honesty of a 10-year-old...





You think it's gonna be this dramatic, kind of sad ending...But then it keeps going, and everybody gets to be happy after all. Seems pretty corny, but like Will says, "Sometimes a little corny is just what we need"...or something like that...

Random Facts
Abigail Breslin's character makes reference to her American Girls doll collection stating that they would be "worth a fortune". Breslin is the third actress to play one of the American Girls, Kit Kittredge, in her own movie (Kit Kittredge: An American Girl). Both films were released in 2008)

Many of the bar scenes were filmed in the upper west-side bar Jake's Dilemma, 81st and Amsterdam.

Rachel Weisz was originally set to play the part of Emily.


Sorry, this post took such a ridiculous amount of time to get out. Life kind of got away from me for a while. The Six Degrees of Actors Anonymous continues :-) 
In case you can't remember who we left off with, Daniel Eric Gold was the six degrees character from the last post Cafe. I'll pick an actor from Definitely, Maybe to choose one of their movies for the next post. If you have suggestions of who to use, let me know. Ryan Reynolds would be easiest, obviously, but there are quite a few great actors in this one.