Rain, Fever and a Movie

It's bad living alone, it's worse living alone in rains and it's worst living alone in rains and falling ill. Sunday, mumbai was drenched and I was down with flu in my home watching "Ugly Betty" episodes back to back, downing slices of thin crust pizza with Diet cola (as if the "diet" soda will slim the affect of that cheese!), then I came across this new movie on the internet, "Definitely, Maybe", the title and the synopsis was tempting enough to burn some bandwidth. Now at this point, if you are a worshipper of IMDB ratings and the top 250 list, or you take critics like Rajeev Masand as movie connoisseur then don't even bother.

The story is about a "ordinary" guy, who is in process of divorce and while he spends time with his 11 year old daughter, she asks him to tell her about all the women in his life. Nothing extraordinary, apart from the fact that the story was unusual. He agrees telling it with names changed and the girl takes it as a challenge to figure out who in the story her mom was, making it a "love story mystery". It's a typical romantic comedy, shot in romance capital New York (Paris is the elitist capital, New York is the real capital, I hate french elitism), focussing on the romance in early days of relationships, adding to it is the tinge of a 11 year old overinformed daughter who is just out of a school lecture about "intercourse" and asks her dad what a "threesome" was? The daughter's role is perfected by the "Little Miss Sunshine" girl, I had loved that movie and the girl so this movie was a delight.

The dad tells her the story of all his three girlfriends, no facts hidden and the girl keeps interupting with her questions and explainations. I loved watching it and feeling good, mostly because the daughter was cute but also because the father-daughter relationship was potrayed as no strings attached, no melodrama friendship. The trailer of the movie said, "The only girl who had never broken his heart, was determined to mend it", and that seemed so true for the daughter.

It was not some out of the world movie, just a feel good romantic movie that could be watched on a sunday afternoon. I have already written enough about father - daughter relationship in my earlier post, but the high point of this movie was when just before the end scene, the dad asks irritatedly "why are you so concerned with all this?" and the little girl replies with conviction "because I want you to be happy", you don't hear that often in your life, atleast with not that sort of conviction.