A GUY THING

A quick glance at the three main actors for "A Guy Thing" (Jason Lee, Selma Blair and Julia Stiles) tells you that this is a second-rate romantic comedy that's more likely to send you out to buy toothpaste than go jump in the sack with your date after the movie is over.

The cast play their empty characters even dumber than the cut-and-paste script demands.

Paul (Jason Lee) is a Seattle ad salesman working for his fiancée Karen’s (Selma Blair) father (James Brolin) when his bachelor party finds him in bed with Becky (Julia Stiles), a studiedly unsexy Tiki dancer from the party.

Although Becky sleeps nude with Paul — her forgotten panties later serve as a teasing plot device — she reassures him that "nothing happened." Indeed, nothing much does transpire as the movie blunders through the six days leading up to Paul's and Karen’s wedding date with Paul acting as a scapegoat for various public and private humiliations over things like crabs, diarrhea, and a certain pair of wet panties.

The uninspired set-up for "A Guy Thing" sacrifices hooking the audience to its presumably lovable characters by attempting to keep the characters too clean. We’re told repeatedly in the dialogue that Paul is a "great guy," but great guys don’t sleep in the same bed with naked women without making the most of the situation.

If the attraction between Paul and Becky is so remarkable as to confuse Paul about his upcoming appointment at the altar with Karen, then we need to see the overwhelming chemical reaction that makes him question his imminent spousal responsibilities. Instead we get Becky and Paul bonding in an empty bathtub while hiding from her brutish ex-boyfriend’s dog.

Their bonding process crystallizes with Becky getting Paul to accelerate his car on a downhill street so that they catch air. Sparks fly when the car lands further down the hill. Forget about the unthinkable dangers that Becky’s auto maneuver contributes to the good people of Seattle. Paul’s having more fun than ever with a girl who is clearly a danger to herself and everyone around her.

Paul is a Generation Y guy who takes passive aggression so far that he’s forgotten there should be some satisfaction at the end of the day. He’s a submissive guy waiting for a girl like Becky to come along and tell him what to do. Even when Paul’s attacked and beaten up by Becky’s ex-boyfriend Ray (Lochlyn Munro), a steroid-taking cop, Paul puts up no resistance. On the contrary, he wallows on his knees during the public humiliation of having various food products poured and dumped all over him before being ordered to climb inside a garbage bin.

"A Guy Thing" was written by four writers who based their idea on a story by lead writer Greg Glienna (writer/director on "Meet The Parents"). The "too many cooks" rule applies in a movie filled with jerky transitions, tedious set pieces and colorless make-nice dialogue. Director Chris Koch ("Snow Day") does a reasonable job of putting the camera in the right spot but never revs the movie up to an energetic comic pitch.

Perhaps the writers’ biggest oversight is that the movie has no subject of satire. Fidelity and marriage are mere set dressings for a film whose characters lack ambition and carnality. Lackluster romantic comedies are typically paraded out during the first few months of every year to buffer a movie season still running hot with holiday movies.

"A Guy Thing" fails even by the premise of its snappy title because we never get to laugh at all things "guy." There were a million ways that four screenwriters could have upped the stakes on Paul’s perfectly ripe dilemma of who, when, and why to get married. But for your comic dollar, you’re better off with the dude in "Just Married." Marriage is an institution that seems destined for obsolescence in the next 20 years or so anyway. Movies like "A Guy Thing" just confirm the trend.

Rated PG-13. 101 mins.