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Ryan Reynolds, Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Banks, Abigail Breslin, Kevin Kline. Written and directed by Adam Brooks. 111 minutes. Rated PG-13. Universal Pictures.

Definitely, Maybe, starring Ryan Reynolds as a divorced New York ad executive reflecting on his failed romances during a bedtime yarn to his precocious young daughter, is a synthetic romantic comedy that’s well intentioned but stale at its center. It’s like one of those Valentine’s chocolates that didn’t quite come from a gourmet chocolatier—looks sweet on the surface, but at the center it’s a cheap-tasting disappointment.

When a school sex ed class ignites eleven-year-old daughter Maya’s curiosities, Will Hayes (Reynolds) takes a trip memory lane to revisit a decade of loves and losses, promising to reveal the identity of Maya’s real mother and why that relationship fell apart. A flashback framing device takes us back to 1992 (which the film amusingly treats as a lifetime ago), when he was an idealistic college graduate and eager young politico relocating to New York City from Madison, WI, joining the campaign of a presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton.

Leaving college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks) behind, he embarks on relationships with two influential women. Aspiring journalist Summer (Rachel Weisz), the girlfriend of a prolific drunken scholar (Kevin Kline), ultimately sells him out for a big scoop. April (Isla Fisher), his bohemian campaign colleague and eventual long-time friend, may just be his soul mate, if they were ever both single at the same time. The film contrives, and then contrives again, to keep this inevitable relationship from happening.

Definitely, Maybe has a few resonant notions about the longevity of modern relationships, and their impact on the upwardly mobile urban male, even if its relationships aren’t as funny as When Harry Met Sally or as witty and bittersweet as Annie Hall. It’s not in the league of those films, or on the intelligence level last year’s Knocked Up, a perfect blend of raucous comedy and observant social satire that also featured a young, cocksure guy coming to terms with manhood. Here, the screenplay doesn’t dig deeply enough into the whys and hows of the relationship failures, or chart their psychological impact. The dates and break-ups are here, but the emotional consequences are absent.

And the flashback structure of the film is a big problem, as is Breslin, as grating here as she was winning in Little Miss Sunshine. She plays little more than one note—over-sophisticated, cloying kid—throughout the entire film. This flashing back and forth is mechanical, and each time we begin to get involved in the back story, the film cuts back to a silly split screen or jarring edit with Breslin interjecting something so cutesy and cloying it knocks the wind out of the adult stuff.

While the film’s actresses shine, they have little heat with Reynolds, perfectly serviceable here and growing into an appealing maturity. Banks is fresh and unpredictable and Weisz is her typical mix of braininess and sexiness. But it is Fisher who impresses most, warm and perky, aging and maturing through the film and delivering in a touching late scene, a telegraphed moment where she receives an unexpected gift. When she’s onscreen, the film comes to life.

The talented Derek Luke is wasted in an empty best-buddy role in a movie that goes for cute, rather than truth.

-Lee Shoquist