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Verdict: It stinks, all right.

Details: Starring French Stewart and Bridgette Wilson. Rated R for language and sexual content. 1 hour, 33 minutes.

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Review: "Love Stinks," and so does this movie. Playing like a revenge fantasy from someone stung by a real-life palimony suit, writer-director Jeff Franklin's misogynist diatribe miscasts irritating character actor French Stewart as our leading man. He plays TV writer Seth, whom we meet en route to Las Vegas to marry longtime girlfriend Chelsea (Bridgette Wilson).

Structured as a long flashback, the movie presents Chelsea as a sex-for-jewelry opportunist, a gold-digging sociopath. "Just buy me a ring, that would shut me up," she tells Seth after nagging him about commitment. After a year of live-in dating, realizing that Seth is content with their vow-free status, she sues him for half his earnings, refuses to leave his house and turns the movie into what "The War of the Roses" would have been had it been made with the tin ear and empty laughs of a sitcom.

Chelsea and best pal Holly (a wooden Tyra Banks) are written as sexy parasites, defined entirely by their need to be married. The movie is at least equal opportunity, in making Seth and his pal Larry (Bill Bellamy) seem equally rancid.

The title is a misnomer. This movie has nothing to do with love; it's about lust, lucre and well-paid losers.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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