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This lightweight cautionary tale has “sitcom” written all over it -- which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you consider TV has attracted a disproportionately large amount of talent in recent years. With a writer/director from “Full House” and stars from “3rd Rock,” “Seinfeld,” “Melrose Place,” “Working,” “Fresh Prince,” -- Jason Bateman even shows up, if in such a thoroughly, umm, calorically enhanced guise that I didn’t recognize him -- whether or not you would enjoy Love Stinks depends on whether you think you’d get some laughs out of seeing faces from those shows in situations and using language they still can’t get away with on TV in this country.
French Stewart, squinting a lot less than he does as Harry on “3rd Rock” (here he looks a little like Don Johnson standing in really bright sunlight), plays a newly successful sitcom writer who, at the wedding of his best friend and script partner, meets Chelsea (Bridgette Wilson, from Mortal Kombat and Billy Madison, giving her what passes for the most notable cinematic experience in this bunch), a woman who’s way too attractive to be normal. Sure enough, shortly after reeling him in she goes psycho, and they wind up in a knock-down palimony battle that makes UPN’s “Smackdown” look like “Swan Lake.” It’s one-sided, formulaic, often rude, but it’s also a little bit funnier than most reviews are giving it credit for if you’re in the right mood. If you’re a tasteless, unrepentant male, in other words. And I can’t rightfully hold any pretension toward gentility myself, so I have to rate it: C-
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