As the Gig’s regular (three or four) readers know, I have a penchant for romantic comedies. But they tend to be pretty formulaic. It’s hard to break too far from boy meets girl; boy loses girl, either through a misunderstanding of some sort or through his being an ass; and finally, boy wins girl back (often by rushing to an airport). And, admittedly, Definitely, Maybe doesn’t stray terribly far from the usual, but it has enough different about it to feel fresh.

Damn you, Ryan Reynolds, for taking more
than your share of the hotties!

In this case, it’s boy meets three girls and loses all three. The movie starts out with Will Hayes (a decent if not overly endearing Ryan Reynolds) as the newly divorced father of Maya (Abigail Breslin, of last year’s smash Little Miss Sunshine). Maya demands to know the story of how Will met her mother. He decides to tell the tale of the three women he dated (played by Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz), but let Maya figure out who her mother is. And so his tale of loves found and lost begins.

Ignoring the fact that no man could ever be so lucky as to date three women as gorgeous and enchanting as the characters played by Banks, Fisher and Weisz, the movie does a nice job of portraying fairly realistic relationships and characters. Maya is probably the least realistic character just because she’s so darned precocious, but you can’t help but love how funny and adorable she is. She’s the new Dakota Fanning, but without the vaguely Children of the Corn creepiness.

The movie is fun, funny and enjoyable. I still enjoyed its counterpart, Love Actually more, but it’s definitely worth checking out. There’s no maybe about it.