courtesy of Picturehouse Simon Pegg, as Dennis, prepares for a 22-km run in David Schwimmer’s “Run Fat Boy” Run.”

It's a fair bet that romantic comedy is one of the worst genres of cinema. Though the occasional bright light shines through in movies like "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "Pretty Woman," for the most part audiences are left with tripe that the studios churn out on a reliably consistent basis, like the legendarily bad "Gigli" and the more recent box-office dud "Fool's Gold."

"Run, Fat Boy, Run" will now join the lowly ranks of those disappointing messes as an overlong, cliché-ridden, humdrum affair that gives minimal laughs and maximum groans. The film barely even makes it past the starting line.

The day of his wedding, Dennis Doyle (Simon Pegg of "Shaun of the Dead") is a nervous wreck, so he literally leaves his pregnant bride, Libby (Thandie Newton), at the altar and runs away as fast as possible. Fast forward five years, and he's still running, shown in a scene in which he chases after a transvestite who has stolen some lingerie from the women's underwear store where he works as a security guard. So begins a long line of contrived and often pointless attempts at humor.

The film never really explains why Dennis is so frightened of commitment. The filmmakers assume that viewers will just take it for granted and that it's funny, but the premise never really pays off.

Eventually, spurred on by the arrival of Whit (Hank Azaria), who has his eye on Libby, Dennis chooses to prove to Libby that he is good enough for her by running in the conveniently-placed, 22-km Nike River Run. Of course, Whit is an avid runner, so the odds are stacked against Dennis, and he must work his hardest to prove his love.

If this sounds cliché, that's because it is. Almost every minute of this movie has some kind of cliché in it. Dennis has consistent rent troubles because he apparently doesn't get any money from his job. He has a son who, of course, will give him a moment of self-aware revelation at a crucial breaking point. Whit is a complete jerk because the script won't trust the viewer to root for Dennis without the odds completely stacked against him. And apparently, first-time director David Schwimmer thinks audiences can't survive longer than five minutes without an ineptly-inserted, pointless musical montage.

It's hard to believe that Simon Pegg, who co-wrote and starred in the brilliant "Hot Fuzz," could possibly choose to star in this completely dead-in-the-water film. There's barely a moment of creativity in the entire affair, and the inexperience of Schwimmer is more than evident in almost every single shot. From the opening scene in which the camera slowly pans down from above accompanied by soothing music, all the way to the final shot where the camera rises upward, overlooking a large field where Dennis plays with his little boy as the sun sets, it couldn't get any more schmaltzy.

The acting is serviceable at best. Pegg is the most disappointing, as he constantly overacts to comically disappointing effects. After his reserved performance in "Hot Fuzz," it's odd that he should choose to go so completely over-the-top. Azaria is not much better. He goes the opposite route and plays his character completely deadpan, and it's never that funny. Thandie Newton is boring. The only person who gets consistent laughs is Dylan Moran as Gordon, Dennis's best friend.

For the first twenty minutes of the movie, there's almost nothing funny going on, and by the time the first laugh does hit the screen, audiences will be bored and restless, both with the laughs and the simple characters. The last half-hour is such a muddled mess of forced, manipulative sentimentality that it almost makes a viewer hate the characters. It's a failure of a film, through and through. If you don't want to waste an hour and forty minutes of your life watching it, you had better run far, far away from this fat boy.

Plot: D
Acting: C+
Direction: C-
Overall: D+