Definitely, Maybe

NEW YORK (CNS) - The chronicle of a young man's amorous ups and downs, "Definitely, Maybe" (Universal) is a carefully wrought romantic comedy, but one that raises some significant moral concerns.

Shaken by her parents' impending divorce, precocious 10-year-old Maya Hayes (Abigail Breslin) asks her advertising executive father, Will (Ryan Reynolds), to tell her the story of how they met and fell in love. The resulting tale, with names and details changed so we don't learn who he ends up with, recounts Will's three on-again, off-again romantic relationships with three very different women.

Sensible Emily (Elizabeth Banks) was Will's college sweetheart back in Madison, Wis. When Will was offered the opportunity to move to New York and work on Bill Clinton's 1992 primary campaign, though, their love collapsed under the strain of separation.

Will, meanwhile, had met assertive journalism student Summer Hartley (Rachel Weisz), a friend of Emily's also living in New York. Summer's dissolute mentor and paramour, renowned political scholar Hampton Roth (Kevin Kline, in charismatic form as a master manipulator), after abandoning her for younger proteges, pushes Summer into Will's arms.

Another prospect opens when Will encounters April (Isla Fisher), a quirky, politically disengaged campaign worker who challenges his idealism. Although she becomes Will's close friend and confidante, the possibility of a romantic connection between these two opposite personalities remains ever-present.

To keep track of the convoluted details of her dad's romantic entanglements, Maya creates multicolored flow charts in a notebook. Will's narrative, meantime, expands to include betrayals, disappointments and unexpected reunions.

Writer-director Adam Brooks' film gets off to a morally worrisome start with Maya repeating the graphic terms she's picked up in her sex education class and asking age-inappropriate questions. Also highly problematic is Will's mechanical avowal of a woman's "right to choose," though his facile campaign rhetoric is quickly undercut by April's flippant response. (Will later becomes totally disillusioned with Clinton after the scandals of his second term.)

There are further troubling elements involving the sexual mores of that era (as permissive as today's). It's clear, for example, that Will is sleeping or has slept with two of the women, while two of them are shown, at different points, in nonmarital sexual situations.

But the overriding focus is Maya's bond with her vulnerable father, as she seeks to understand how he and her mother came together, and why her mother is now asking for a divorce. (The script seems to imply that Will would not be averse to a reconciliation.)

Generally well-written and often touching, "Definitely, Maybe" merits cautious endorsement for mature viewers.

The film contains implied nonmarital sexual activity and cohabitation, some profanity, frank sexual talk and crass language, a divorce theme, a lesbian reference, and a political pro-choice allusion. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops