Love Stinks (1999)

With great self-control, I'll resist repeating half the title -- Love Stinks -- in a nuanced consideration of this rancid, misogynist comedy about a sitcom writer named Seth (French Stewart, minus his ''3rd Rock From the Sun'' alien's squint) whose blandly perfect girlfriend, Chelsea (Bridgette Wilson), turns into a cartoonish shrew in her desperation to bag our hero as a husband.

But holy mother of the bride, what bile was ''Full House'' creator Jeff Franklin drinking when he came up with this curdled revenge fantasy? One minute Chelsea is the sexually adventurous girl of Seth's dreams, the next she's such an irredeemable harpy targeted for humiliation that one doesn't need to be Gloria Steinem to wonder about Lover Boy's own culpability and bad-relationship karma in this sick dynamic -- and Franklin's motive for encouraging laughs at such a cheap price.

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