Full Review

Whereas satire can sometimes utilize crudeness as a blunt tool to make its points, the comedy "The Ex" (MGM/Weinstein) is just simple-minded, sour and unfunny.

Tom Reilly (Zach Braff) is an amiable goof who gets fired from one job after another for, we are told, his uncompromising principles, although at work he seems to behave like nothing more than a jerk. When he loses his latest job, he and his corporate-attorney wife, Sofia (Amanda Peet), move from Manhattan to Ohio, where he can work for father-in-law Bob's (Charles Grodin) ad agency, and she'll be a stay-at-home mom.

There, Bob puts Tom under the wing of the smooth-talking, back-stabbing Chip Sanders (Jason Bateman), a dashing paraplegic so indomitable that even in high school years before he was a cheerleader with Sofia. Still pining for her, Chip begins a campaign to sabotage, humiliate and emasculate the honest and decent Tom. This involves such rib-ticklers as conning Tom into playing wheelchair basketball, and then inciting the ire of the other paraplegics by exposing Tom as an able-bodied outsider.

As a romantic couple, Braff and Peet have all the sparks of a mushroom. Grodin, though, in his first film in 13 years, is a welcome presence. He takes his one-note disapproving father-in-law role and makes the man a fully rounded human being.

Director Jesse Peretz and first-time screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman are neither clever nor satiric enough to transcend formula. "The Ex" merely uses vulgarity for its own sake, never to make a larger point.

The film contains some crude and crass language, one instance each of the f-word and of mild profanity, some sexual banter and innuendo, condom use, a mild scene of clothed marital groping, some slapstick violence and several inadvisable scenes of a child trying to swallow a hamburger whole. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

The following movies have been evaluated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop's Office for Film and Broadcasting according to artistic merit and moral suitability. The reviews include the USCCB rating, the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief synopsis of the movie.

The classifications are as follows:

• A-I -- general patronage;
• A-II -- adults and adolescents;
• A-III -- adults;
• A-IV**
• L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
• O -- morally offensive.