Most fluffy-and-sweet romantic comedies fill the screen with good-looking, charming singles who are smart and funny and say all the right things at the right time. Marathon hookups ensue, maybe a little conflict is thrown in, and the audience goes home happy, dreaming about the perfect mate. Loving Jezebel, on the other hand, throws together the most odious cast of characters this side of reform school and, although it purports to celebrate the power of love, will leave the emotionally unfettered looking forward to spending next Saturday night alone with a DVD and a bottle of wine. The story belongs to Theo (Hill Harper), an allegedly cute-as-can-be bachelor who’s been drawn to other men’s women since his first game of Duck-Duck-Goose. And, of course, even though his personality is Wonder Bread-bland and his most passionate display is a whiny, insistent “I wanna be with you, OK?” to someone who tells him she has other plans (the bitch!), every woman who comes into his life falls crazy in love with him. Not that the Jezebels are prizes themselves: There’s the obnoxious one who pissily tells Theo during a date that she thinks sex and kissing are disgusting; there’s the obnoxious one who not only surrounds herself with teddy bears but also shoves them in Theo’s face while they’re fooling around; and, oh yes, there’s the obnoxious one who comes on to Theo, tells her boyfriend that Theo got her drunk and started feeling her up, and then follows Theo around professing her love for him before finally shouting, “I need communication!” when he doesn’t reciprocate. Yet Theo can’t help desiring each and every one of the shrill clucks, whom we are supposed to see as epitomes of Beauty and Poetry and Love. And the award for worst line of dialogue? You be the judge: “I told her the story I was sure would scare her away, but Samantha wept like Shakespeare’s Desdemona for the distressful strokes I had suffered” or, “History called them Jezebel, but I called them love.” —Tricia Olszewski