National Lampoon's Gold Diggers

If you're given the choice between seeing "National Lampoon's Gold Diggers" and death, you'd be wise to choose death.

Even a slow, excruciating, painful demise would be preferable to this slow, unbelievably excruciating, painful alleged comedy.

In fact, with the diminishing returns — both monetary and in terms of genuine laughs — of the various "National Lampoon" features after the first "Vacation" film, you'd think someone would have gotten around to passing a law against any such future projects.

As for the latest and lamest of the bunch, it's without question the worst thing to hit the big screen so far this year.

For those who even care, the title refers to Calvin Menhoffer and Leonard Smallwood (Will Friedle and Chris Owen, respectively), two dim-witted, would-be crooks whose various get-rich-quick schemes are spectacularly unsuccessful.

So it's no surprise when the two men agree to marry the Mundt sisters (RenZe Taylor and Louise Lasser), the heirs to a prophylactic manufacturer's fortune. But what they don't know is that the sixtysomething spinsters are actually penniless. What's more, they are planning to kill their new husbands and collect the insurance money.

What plot there is here is in service to a series of wince-inducing sex gags involving the twentysomething males and the much-older women. (Shudder!) Small surprise that the irksome Friedle (TV's "Boy Meets World") and Owen (the "American Pie" movies) appear to be looking for an exit during every scene.

The one person you really have to feel sorry for here — well, aside from audiences unlucky enough to stumble into this dud — is Lasser, a talented comedic actress who had to stoop this low just to get work.

"National Lampoon's Gold Diggers" is rated PG-13 for crude humor and references to sexual and other bodily functions, violence (various murder attempts, supposedly done for laughs), simulated sex, scattered use of profanity, drug use (a hookah), and brief partial female nudity (revealing swimsuits). Running time: 87 minutes.

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