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New Yorker Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) picks up his 10-year-old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin from “Signs” and “Little Miss Sunshine”) on the day her class hears all about where babies come from. So naturally she asks him her backstory for a bedtime tale. Her parents are about to sign their divorce papers, which is not a happy ending for a kid who points out that penguins mate for life. Will starts with leaving behind his college beau in Madison, and heading to NYC to volunteer for presidential campaign of an earlier Clinton. He meets a temp by the copy machine, and tracks down a journalist who lost her diary. All three women—Emily (Elizabeth Banks), April (Isla Fisher) and Summer (Rachel Weisz)—figure in Will’s love life over the years. This romantic comedy is also period piece from 1992 to the present that tracks Will’s career from political consulting to advertising. One background detail is a damning live-TV clip of a befuddled Bush. Local color—pre- and post- 9/11—is choicely marked in manners. Writer-director Adam Brooks (“Wimbledon,” “French Kiss”) says he admires “Broadcast News” for its longer-form treatment of romance. That curiosity about how friends and lovers evolve, leave, come back and then try again gives “Definitely, Maybe” an emotional realism often missing in the genre. Maya is a very wise little listener. Her delight in her dad’s narrative is a stand-in for our own. In a film where a precious copy of Jane Eyre supplies a subplot, the kid gets away with sweet lines about making a “happy ending” come true. With Derek Luke, Alexie Gilmore, Robert Klein and one ex-president impersonator. 111m. (Bill Stamets)
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