Starring Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore. Rated 18A. Now playing at the Cinemark Tinseltown and the SilverCity Metropolis

Produced with the heavy-handed endorsement of Playboy Enterprises, Miss March is about two young pals who decide to take a road trip to the Playboy mansion in L.A. The horny Tucker (Trevor Moore) is a lifelong Hugh Hefner freak who embraces the magazine’s philosophy with obsessive gusto. The sexually uptight Eugene (Zach Cregger) is on the trail of Cindi (Raquel Alessi), his former high-school sweetheart who has just become a Playmate centrefold. The twist? Eugene has only recently awakened from a four-year coma. (He fell down the stairs in a drunken stupor on prom night—only minutes away from bedding Cindi for the first time.) Much ado is made of the fact that he is still a virgin.

Moore and Cregger—who have a background in sketch comedy—also codirected and cowrote the screenplay. In their moviemaking debut, they lean heavily on a gross-out style of comedy that’s reminiscent of a more sexually charged There’s Something About Mary. The script is packed with supremely tasteless jokes on everything from accidentally quaffing urine-based cocktails to Eugene’s serial incontinence. Of course, low comedy—broken up by a few quick flashes of silicone-enhanced nudity—is the whole point here. The trouble? Miss March is dated, strained, and contains maybe three genuine laughs from beginning to end.

Eugene’s prissy moralist gets tiring after a few minutes. And Moore seems intent on channelling both the wardrobe and the overdone facial mugging of Jim Carrey circa Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But then, this really isn’t a movie. It’s more like a 90-minute attempt by Playboy to instill some pop-culture Viagra into its flaccid brand. The product placement here is both relentless and shameless. Hefner contributes an embarrassing cameo that suggests he should have stayed in his heart-shaped bed with the shades pulled down.