Collegiate Times

The traditionally vibrant, cheery meadow of 'aww'-inspiring romantic comedies just got a heavy dose of cynical pesticide.

The genre usually tries to convince even the hardest of hearts that love can overcome all things, but "Definitely, Maybe" appeals to the realists.

With Ryan Reynolds playing Will Hayes, a young, successful but disappointed advertising executive, it's like catching up with Van Wilder after his seven years of college.

Hayes hangs his hat in New York City and greets the audience with a wave of malaise from his job pushing Cap'n Crunch over Fruit Loops and his recently filed divorce. He has a daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin, sporting Hollywood's most enviable set of pudgy cheeks), whose world has just been wrecked by the educational discovery that men and women have penises and vaginas -- and use them on each other.

Despite "Little Miss Sunshine" unfortunately flirting with "Napoleon Dynamite" overplayed-itis, Breslin clearly has a talent that puts her at the cinematic front of her generation.

In "Definitely", though, her precociousness is nauseating and does little more than convince us of what we already knew -- we love to hear little kids say penis and vagina.

If you've seen CBS' infectious "How I Met Your Mother," "Definitely" will seem like an unoriginal and less successful rip-off. For a bedtime story, Maya asks Will to tell her the story of how he and her mother met. What unfolds is far from romantic and resembles the life story of the saddest, loneliest man in any bar.

With ambitions of becoming president, Will leaves Wisconsin and his college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks) for the Big Apple and the campaign of presidential hopeful Bill Clinton. Despite breaking the ankles of all romantics, "Definitely" shows it doesn't lack wit or character, flaunting running gags such as Clinton's platform of "understanding women."

The film's confusion, though, bogs it down. Romantic comedies cannot be this depressing or full of this much ennui and disappointment.

The genre's goal is to flaunt in our face that our relationships will never be this cute or perfect, but instead "Definitely" provides a realistic mirror of romantic and personal failings, beginning of course with the fact that this love story in reverse ends in divorce.

Will plans on reuniting with Emily as soon as the campaign is over, but accidental romantic encounters with her childhood friend, Summer (Rachel Weisz), and the copy girl, April (Isla Fisher), begin to cloud his mind about the possibilities of love. When Emily flies to New York and tells Will she slept with his roommate, it clouds his mind a little bit more.

From that point, this romantic comedy changes masks once again and becomes a sappy whodunit where it seems anyone could be the mother; it is the anti-Maury if you will. Will seems to be in shallow love with all the girls, falling for them each and never making it clear whether he prefers one or is just controlled by convenience.

If anything, "Definitely" is too real for its own good, because its bitter realism, shrouded in occasional jokes and awkward humor, doesn't come off as comedy, but more as a lesson that we'll all probably hate our jobs and never find an ultimately fulfilling relationship. Isn't that funny?

The cast is a slideshow of ill-used Oscar talent with Reynolds actually pulling off a 30-something who is jaded by disappointment. Rachel Weisz's portrayal of the career-driven journalist, Summer, is somewhat inspiring in her independence and confidence, but this success seems like it should be in a heavy melodrama.

The strangest case of Oscar confusion is the emergence of a bearded Kevin Kline playing Herman Roth, a gin-soaked professor and writer with a thirst for undergrads.

His character, who has a brief but impacting relationship with Summer, does little more than show how love isn't perhaps a "one for each of us" kind of thing, but a flow of timing and circumstance.

Just a few days late for Valentine's Day, "Definitely" won't fill any hearts with longing or butterflies. Its grim romantic realism is sharp and heavy, and its few landed jokes don't tip the scale. That's not to say it's bad, it just doesn't succeed in its attempt to push the genre.