The Suburbans

Jennifer Love Hewitt has reason to celebrate: By appearing in this stunningly laugh-free comedy, she’s already gotten her career-worst movie out of the way. Hewitt plays a music executive who offers the one-hit new-wave wonders the Suburbans a chance to reunite for a comeback — but of course they must suffer the attendant indignities. Besides getting saddled with a tour bus that prominently displays Kenny G’s name and being refused entrance to their own release party, these mid-30s Long Islanders have to cope with domestic issues that bear little resemblance to reality.

With fewer distractions and the slightest smidgen of wit, the movie might have made an amusing companion to the terrific Still Crazy. But director, cowriter, and nominal star Donal Lardner Ward (My Life’s in Turnaround) prefers to indulge in the kind of insipid relationship navel gazing and ludicrously overripe dialogue that’s all the rage in vanity indie productions. And just how was the filmmaker able to finagle Ben and Jerry Stiller for not one but two scenes? Stranger still, did the other members of the pedigreed cast (including Amy Brenneman and Robert Loggia) realize they’d be appearing in a film boasting all the production values of ’70s porn? D-