On the verge of a divorce, New York ad exec Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) shares with his adorably cute and impossibly inquisitive daughter ("Little Miss Sunshine's" Abigail Breslin) a history of the women he has loved.

Whether this type of bedtime tale constitutes a new high in parental transparency or a peculiar form of child abuse is but one of the nagging questions hanging around "Definitely, Maybe," a Valentine's Day romance that this viewer, at least, found largely unromantic. It opens tomorrow in some Hawai'i theaters.

Most of writer/director Adam Brooks' film consists of flashbacks as Will examines his early years of bachelorhood in the Big Apple, changing the names of the players to protect the innocent. The problem with this approach is that along the way he's bowdlerizing the tale for the benefit of his impressionable daughter, so we can never be sure if what we're seeing is what really happened or Dad's cleaned-up version.

The first of the Big Three in Will's romantic history is Emily (Elizabeth Banks), his fresh-scrubbed college sweetheart from Wisconsin. She sends William off to work in NYC for the 1991 Clinton presidential campaign with a promise to remain faithful. We'll see how that works out.

Next up is April ("Wedding Crashers' " Ilsa Fisher), a pert but apolitical temp worker hired by the campaign. William will share with her a chaste off-and-on relationship that lasts years.

Finally there's Summer (Rachel Weisz), a journalism grad student who ends up in Will's bed.

Will flits back and forth among these three like a bee uncertain of which flower to pollinate, and so uncompelling is his search for true love that a day after seeing the film I couldn't remember much about it or who he ended up with.

Far more successful than the romantic angle is Brooks' recreation of early '90s politics, complete with Gennifer Flowers affair, cell phones the size of bread loaves, lots of smoldering cigarettes and a big dose of idealism that, one realizes, has been all but absent from our recent political history.

The biggest problem with "Definitely, Maybe" is that leading man Reynolds feels strangely out of water in a role that never lets him unleash his comedy chops. In films like "Waiting" and even the woeful "Van Wilder" series, he's established himself as a latter-day Bill Murray, a postmodern wise guy with impeccable timing. Here his sincerity is smothering.

There are solid supporting players — Kevin Kline as a graying, skuzzy political writer and Derek Luke as Will's longtime best bud — but the best performance comes from young Miss Breslin. Granted, she's asked to play the sort of preternaturally wise yet innocent child one encounters only on movie screens, but for all that, she delivers the film's most convincing moments.