Starring Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, and Gabriel Macht. Rated PG. Opens Friday, February 2, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Less a movie than a pastiche of odious clichés assembled by a committee dedicated to insulting women while taking their money, Because I Said So is painful to sit through in every possible way.

Foremost, it hurts to see Diane Keaton cattle-prodded through a role that makes her turn opposite Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give look like something in a Liv Ullman movie. Here, she plays Daphne, a therapist (red alert, red alert!) intent on smothering her three daughters. The elders (Lauren Graham, Piper Perabo, utterly wasted) are married, so to hell with them. All attentions are now firmly placed on Milly (Mandy Moore), a superb caterer who scares men away with her scattered personality and mulish laugh. Yeah, right. Did you notice the word caterer?

I tend to go easy on romantic comedies because they’re easy to sit through and I like to see actors enjoy themselves and each other. But that means I have seen a few—something apparently not anticipated by writers Jessie Nelson (I Am Sam) and Karen Leigh Hopkins (Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael) and director Michael Lehmann (mostly TV, but also Heathers), who hand us Motown sing-alongs, cellphone antics, and gals who stumble on Internet porn and can’t turn the computer off.

And how about a montage of dates from hell showing up in the same chair of a brick-walled restaurant? Because manages to throw a new twist on that old standby by equating ordinary Asian men with the ninnies, creeps, horse-faced transsexuals, and other unsuitables who would presumably answer a personal ad seeking straightforward marriage material.

In this case, the ad was placed by mom (so different from the sibling-placed ad in Must Love Dogs). Daphne is instantly sold on a wealthy, somewhat anal architect (Tom Everett Scott), and therefore can’t countenance Milly spending a moment with a laid-back musician (Gabriel Macht)—even though he has a house on Venice Beach, an adorably mischievous little boy (no explanations about the mother)—and a ruggedly rumpled single dad (Stephen Collins) just about Daphne’s age. Of course, we never hear the guy play, so maybe he sucks.

It’s a testament to Moore’s still- nascent talent that she comes out more or less unharmed. As written, her character is far more annoying than what she delivers. Of course, that character does get in deep emotional and sexual relationships with two men without slipping a hint to either one or to her sisters—suggesting a somewhat, shall we say, darker personality than anyone here admits.

Anyway, I’ll stop now, understanding that a few viewers may yet fall for this thing. Clearly, they must love dogs.