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'Definitely, Maybe'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

February 14, 2008

Parental advisory: This review contains references to actors whose names may induce a state of befuddlement or otherwise provoke a spate of vexing questions from your children.

Let's start with Margaret O'Brien, an obstreperous child persona of the 1940s who is uncannily channeled by Abigail Breslin in "Definitely, Maybe."

Like most of the pushy little sweethearts played by Miss O'Brien in and around "Meet Me in St. Louis," Breslin's 11-year-old Maya Hayes is all charged up with an inquisitiveness that could paralyze Google's search engine.

At the receiving end of the girl's unrelenting interrogations is her dad, Will (Ryan Reynolds), a New York political consultant who has raised Maya on his own. Inspired by her sex-ed classes, the precocious schoolgirl prods her father to share the secrets of his dating life and resolve the most pertinent mystery of all: the identity of her mother.

This is the reverse-"Mamma Mia" premise of "Definitely, Maybe," which aspires to the knowing, working-world sophistication of such James L. Brooks comedies as "Broadcast News" and "Jerry Maguire." To a great extent it succeeds, even as it threatens to implode at times in the effort to be casual and urbane.

The equivocating title of Adam Brooks' (no relation) agile-footed romantic comedy is a response to a marriage proposal role-play between Will and April (Isla Fisher, a spark-plug beauty with surefire comic instincts), one of three women from his past. It could also be read as the political bet-hedging style endemic to the election trail where Will toiled in 1992 as a campaign worker for Bill Clinton's first presidential bid.

It was a college kid's idealism, as he explains to Maya, that prompted him to leave his girlfriend Emily (Elizabeth Banks) back in Wisconsin to work for Clinton in New York City. And it was in his new life that he fell for April, a prickly, politically noncommittal campaign drudge, and Summer Hartley (a radiant Rachel Weisz), a sexually free-spirited political journalist who sleeps with her rumpled drunk of a thesis adviser (a droll Kevin Kline, back in form after his buffoonish Guy Noir in "A Prairie Home Companion").

Brooks gets bright performances out of Weisz and especially Fisher, who each embody a certain ineffable mix of unpredictability and sexiness that makes smart guys do foolish things. In a wonderfully outre moment guaranteed to send the screen's cigarette police charging, Will and April share an erotically charged smoke that sets the pace for their slow-burning mating dance.

Reynolds provides the perfect foil for these spiky women. Quietly masculine and so relaxed in his effects that he could be prescribed for anxiety, Reynolds exudes an elusive charisma that suggests Ryan O'Neal by way of George Gobel. The film can't help but emulate his muted energy, and by Will's birthday party in the protracted second half, I found myself itching for the "Cloverfield" monster to attack Manhattan and shake things up a bit. In lieu of rampaging beasts, we get Miss Breslin, who can browbeat with the best of them.

DEFINITELY, MAYBE (PG-13). Adam Brooks' urbane and cleverly of-the-moment romantic comedy stars Ryan Reynolds as a single parent reviewing his dating history for his inquiring daughter ("Little Miss Sunshine's" willful Abigail Breslin). Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz, as two of his bungled romances, are a pleasure. 1:52 (sexual content, including some frank dialogue, language and smoking). At area theaters.