It's always been a nice idea to place valentines day smack dab in the second half of winter. It's cold and melancholic, making it a bit tough to get warm bodies up and out to go see a matinée movie, and so any encouragement to get said warm bodies snuggling up in the back of a theater is a plenty fine idea by me. The new Universal Pictures release, Definitely, Maybe, arrives just in time for this holiday de l'amour and it brings an additional sense of sentimental fuzziness by being perhaps the first major 90's nostalgia flick of the post-millennium. Occasional Nirvana references pop up enough to boost their iTunes sales but thankfully this navel-gazing never slides into being the obtuse eyeball-rolling of funny-haircuts-as-gag-fodder that most 80's rehashes have been.

Definitely, Maybe effortlessly nails the romantic comedy format as it works through the prerequisite boy-meets-girl, boy-falls-in-love-with-girl, boy-arrogantly-fumbles-the-situation-but-remains-a-vulnerable-and-sympathetic-character - its all here. But it's how the film manages to unwind this otherwise formulaic genre staple that allows it to breath with fresh life creating one truelly memorable film of this season.

Ryan Reynolds plays Will Hayes as the lead “boy” character in a slightly reprising the mannish-boy roles he's previously nailed so easily. Hayes is a Manhattan single father living with his cute-as-a-button daughter Maya, played by Abigail Breslin who likewise is a can't miss in this role. When she comes home from a grammar school sex-ed class armed with a pixie-sized arsenal of questions, Hayes is forced to explain the birds, the bees, and why mommy and daddy aren't together anymore. Unable to shatter her fragile pre-adolescent world with adult-sized sex-politics, Haze proceeds to lay out his whole history via flash-back and candy-coats it in a sort of guessing game where Mia gets to speculate which potential mate from his past (names changed to protect the innocent) ends up being the incubator for his daughter's own in-utero existence.

Aside from the slight awkwardness of a prepubescent father-daughter love-chat about ex's, this set-up ultimately successfuly serves to both soften the sentimentality with Maya's charming interjections as well as help the viewer to navigate the at times tangled web of a gen-X relationship in New York.

Haze's tale of love and loss begins in his immediate post-college days where he leaves behind rural Wisconsin along with his small-town girlfriend and heads to big city New York to work on the just blooming Clinton campaign. Nostalgia is appropriately squeezed out this setting, the relative-innocuousness of Clintonian sexcapades along side foreshadowing rib-ticklers of a young Governor W. Bush, but this context retains a contemporary poignancy as our own election-year cycle moves forward, this time a different Clinton reprising the role.

Haze is quickly caught up in the excitement of his career as well as the ups and downs of love gained and lost. Maya helps chart his love-quest as she tries to narrow down which lady in dad's life is her future mommy: Will it be the small town sweetheart? The sultry sophisticate journalist? The spunky-yet-edgy female best-friend?

The ride is fun and sweet and director Adam Brooks never overreaches his grasp. The nostalgia and love are never served up in overpowering doses. Definitely, Maybe succeeds at being exactly what it needs to be: fun, hart-warming, and romantic, just what you need to shake those winter woes.