Writer/Director Adam Brooks and and Ryan Reynolds on the set of Definitely, Maybe Andrew Schwartz/Courtesy of Universal

A romantic comedy rolled into a whodunit set in New York? Audiences expecting a nod to Mighty Aphrodite or Bullets Over Broadway will be disappointed. "It is not like a Woody Allen movie," cautions Brooks. "There are echoes of things that would remind you maybe of Manhattan sometimes. It doesn't have that very nervous neurotic chitchat thing. That is not what is going on. It is really not what the writing is like." But the film is nevertheless a love letter to New York City. "New York is a very important character," Brooks emphasizes. "New York is also a city that changed a lot in the 90s — for better and worse. Because 1992 was, I guess, when [Rudolph] Giuliani started to do his thing. It is when it begins an economic upturn and he starts cleaning up the city and so what is good about it is it became a healthier, richer, cleaner city. And then on the other hand, it kind of lost a bit of its soul. Lots of young people couldn't afford to live here anymore and some of the dirt and some of that hardscrabble thing was lost and not for the best. And I thought that was also like growing up. When Will arrives, he arrives with nothing and he does very well for himself. But doing well for himself doesn't necessarily make him happy all the time."

On set, the film's political undertones are not pressing but nonetheless omnipresent. Dressed in a grubby T-shirt and sweats, Reynolds flicks a cigarette into the toilet bowl and slouches through his apartment, littered with unlaundered clothes and forgotten wine glasses, before plunking himself onto the couch opposite the television. On the wall a FDR poster from 1942 shouts out the idealism that Will has lost: "America Will Build." In this scene, Will is now a man disillusioned with love, politics, life. On the TV, Bill Clinton's now infamous hair-splitting response to the question about the nature of his relationship to Monica Lewinsky ("It depends on what your definition of 'is' is") triggers Will's rage and he throws a carton of take-out Chinese food at the screen. His hopes and dreams for the administration he so fiercely believed in at the beginning of the 90's have faded. Says Brooks: "I just thought that you come with all your energy and your ideals and your ambition, and what happens to it in that time between when you're 24 or 25 and you finish school and 32 and 33 when often people decide to have a family or get married? What happens in that time? And it is also in that time when you are figuring about love."

It is not lost on Brooks that the film will be released at the height of the 2008 presidential primaries: "I was hoping that [the timing] would all work out." He muses that the political landscape has changed: "The 90s now, post-9/11, seems in hindsight to [have been] an innocent time in terms of that we could afford to be worried about oral sex in the White House. It seems so petty and trivial." As to the importance of politics in this rom-com Reynolds is less committal: "Well, without getting too much into politics, I love portraying a character who is young and cares about the lawmakers and the society shapers. I think it is important for people everywhere to be politically active. Beyond that, I just love it when young people vote. I don't care who they vote for — just as long as they vote."