Starring Simon Baker and Winona Ryder. Rated 14A.

Fair-haired Australian Simon Baker’s charm fails to provide an emotional centre to Sex and Death 101, a tale more silly than sinful.

Last seen as the rakish magazine writer in The Devil Wears Prada, Baker plays Roderick Blank, a fast-food potentate with a thing for the lay-deez. Actually, he is almost ready to give up bachelorhood to wed one of many interchangeable blonds, seen here as the faces of standard-issue desire. Trouble comes with an odd e-mail naming all the women he ever slept with, or ever will.

Against the advice of his trusted assistant (Mindy Cohn), he lubes up for listomania. As presented by writer-director Daniel Waters, who scripted the influential Heathers, these sexual situations are devoid of heat or suspense. This may be the point for a guy knowing exactly who will next play hide the hot dog with him, but it makes dull work for the rest of us.

The pedestrian-looking film’s only visual variety comes from segments set in a colourless sci-fi purgatory where Rod goes to figure out what’s happening. Despite some amusement there from comic Patton Oswalt, this trick gets old fast, and so does the monotonous dialogue. Roderick and pals are stock “guy” characters, with the women more like models than everyday people, so the satire is of an obvious and oddly ungrounded nature.

Then there’s the notion that our harried horndog would hang onto the list but never look at its last name. That person, of course, has to be called Death Nell, a black-clad gal literally knocking men out across the country. She is played by Winona Ryder, and the former Heathers star manages to invest some needed humanity, thus suggesting where the movie might have gone. Still, Waters plays it safe with her character so we can grab a happy ending that congratulates us for skirting the margins of sex and death while never even getting one centimetre closer to the abyss.