Ashton aces his April flick

April’s edition of the Ashton Kutcher Romantic Comedy of the Month Club is a winner.

It has a lot of reasons to stink but doesn’t.

Let’s get the sounds-stinky-stuff out of the way first: It’s an “Oops, the two lovers just missed connecting again” movie. It makes the charismatic Amanda Peet (“The Whole Nine Yards”) compete with a series of deforming wigs that are the hair equivalent of landfill. Its trajectory from attraction to complications to love could not be more predictable. And it stars Ashton Kutcher, for crying out loud.

Nevertheless, “A Lot Like Love” is a witty, sharply observed romantic comedy, one buoyed by an unsentimental, sardonic sensibility that’s closer to “Four Weddings and a Funeral” than, say, anything that ever starred Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock. The movie knows timing is everything in romance, so it doesn’t throw fake obstacles in the way of Kutcher and Peet, who strike genuine sparks off each other as people who meet occasionally over the course of seven years during which one or the other is always unavailable.

“A Lot Like Love” has a loose structure. Skipping through the seven years frees it from boring things like exposition and transition and allows it to pinpoint the moments in the characters’ lives when they gradually figure out how they feel about love. It feels the way romance feels in your memory, where you recall the big moments. And, because the movie glides past so much connecting stuff, “Love” also has time to toss big surprises into its plot’s fairly conventional trajectory and to spend time with a cast of vibrant supporting performers.

Stepping to the head of that class is Kathryn Hahn, as Peet’s buddy. She was a gas as a wise bartender in last year’s underappreciated “Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!” and she takes the screen here so forcefully and with such salty humor that you know leading roles cannot be far in the future. Even though her parts have been small, it’s still obvious: Kathryn Hahn looks a lot like a star.