Jersey Guy

The real trouble is Jack: He's narcissistic and tough to like (Pontevecchio's fine, but a younger actor might not have brought an impression of arrested development to the character), and his crude sense of humor borders on the disgusting.

The unfocused writing makes the film increasingly less convincing as it stumbles toward an awkwardly structured resolution -- closing on a conga line that makes "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" seem cutting-edge.

The only pro involved in this amateurish labor of love is veteran character actor Arthur Nascarella, cast as Jack's florist father.

Parlavecchio is kind of an asshole, and that–along with the stilted dialogue, clueless portrayals of women, and the fact that much of the plot has been lifted from Tom Perrotta's terrific novel "The Wishbones"–ranks among the film's main problems.

Monotonously paced and too long, Jersey Guy also suffers in its early scenes from attempts at humor that probably read better on the page than they play on the screen.

A painfully awful film.

Like a spiral perm growing out, Jersey Guy droopily unravels as partial homage to the Balki Bartokamous school of bad acting before collapsing into a mess of fragmentary sermonizing on deceit, commitment, and the meaning of choice.