'Definitely'? Maybe

Despite an awkward title and a couple of shallow jokes, writer-director Adam Brooks has still been able to please Valentine’s Day audiences with the holiday release of his romantic comedy/drama “Definitely, Maybe.”
Ryan Reynolds stars as William Hayes, a New York City ad exec who is pressured by his daughter Maya to recount his life’s love story on the same day he receives his divorce papers in the mail. Maya has gone through sex education in elementary school, and is, of course, brimming with questions about life, love and sex.
Hayes retells his story under one condition: He changes the names of the characters involved so Maya will have to guess the true identity of her mother at the end of the tale. Hayes’ story covers a transitional period in his life in which he goes to New York City to work for the Clinton campaign in 1992 and meets a few women along the way.
This device gives the film a flashback-style narrative that progresses the plot effectively and gives this usually-cliched romantic comedy a lot of originality, a touch of depth and a striking, unpredictable ending. Not once after Hayes started his story did I truly feel like I knew how the movie was going to end. I realized how just a touch of this impulsiveness in an average romantic comedy can bring forth such serious character depth.
Although Ryan Reynolds finally seems to be rid of the wisecracking perfectly-delivering-party-guy character that he has been cast as in most films, his performance is strictly average in this one. The supporting cast, however, which includes Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz as Maya’s potential mothers, is fairly strong, and we get a fantastic-though-short appearance from Kevin Kline, an IU alumnus, as a chain-smoking, hard-drinking writer who tries to teach Hayes how to be a real man.
Although it may not be Oscar material in any way, “Definitely, Maybe” is one romantic comedy that uses originality and unpredictability to its advantage, all the while pleasing and intriguing Valentine’s moviegoers in the process.