Date movie only rates a 'Maybe'

On the verge of a divorce, New York ad exec Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) shares with his adorably cute and impossibly inquisitive daughter ("Little Miss Sunshine's" Abigail Breslin) a history of the women he has loved.

Whether this type of bedtime tale constitutes a new high in parental transparency or a peculiar form of child abuse is but one of the nagging questions hanging around "Definitely, Maybe."

Most of writer/director Adam Brooks' film consists of flashbacks as Will examines his early years of bachelorhood in the Big Apple, changing the names of the players to protect the innocent. The problem with this approach is that along the way he's bowdlerizing the tale for the benefit of his impressionable daughter, so we can never be sure if what we're seeing is what really happened or Dad's cleaned-up version.

The first of the Big Three in Will's romantic history is Emily (Elizabeth Banks), his fresh-scrubbed college sweetheart from Wisconsin. Next up is April (Isla Fisher from "Wedding Crashers"), a pert but apolitical temp worker hired by the campaign. Finally there's Summer (Rachel Weisz), a journalism student.

Will flits back and forth among these three like a bee uncertain of which flower to pollinate, and so uncompelling is his search for true love that a day after seeing the film I couldn't remember much about it or who he ended up with.

The biggest problem with "Definitely, Maybe" is that leading man Reynolds feels strangely out of water in a role that never lets him unleash his comedy chops. In films like "Waiting" and even the woeful "Van Wilder" series he's established himself as a latter-day Bill Murray, a wise guy with impeccable timing. Here his sincerity is smothering.

The best performance comes from young Breslin. Granted, she's asked to play the sort of preternaturally wise yet innocent child one encounters only on movie screens, but for all that she delivers the film's most convincing moments.