Starring Gabrielle Miller, John Cassini, and Fred Ewanuick. Rated PG.

This is the official dumping season for Canadian films, and none is more deserving of that honour than Love and Other Dilemmas, a collection of all the worst tendencies in homegrown cinema.

Most fall into two general categories, both meagre: intimate chamber dramas, usually involving family secrets and cathartic outbursts, often in the woods; and sub-sitcom farces, pretty much built on the same things.

Creaky drama is dreary, but is there anything more painful than bad comedy? Many cast members from Corner Gas and the infinitely better Robson Arms—including John Cassini as a chatty Mafioso and Fred Ewanuick as a bumbling thief—herniate their way through this disaster, directed by Larry Di Stefano from a cringe-inducing script by Deborah Peraya.

It’s about a woman (Gabrielle Miller) whose family is cursed with a line of women whose men drop dead on their wedding days. Or something like that. The groom in this case (Stephen Lobo) is alleged to have a black-and-white film-noir series on TV (because there are so many of those), and the resultant humour is predicated on the notion that he also must sell his furniture to raise $500 for a ring. Or something like that.

Rick Stevenson’s Expiration Date offered a better riff on a similar theme in the same year this was made, 2006, but that locally shot flick never picked up distribution. Why this soggy sack of a movie did is funnier, and sadder, than anything seen on-screen.