Review: Dark comedy-thriller ‘Get the Girl’ is a misfire from the get-go

A staged kidnapping isn’t the only thing that goes from botched to worse where the tone-deaf black comedy-thriller “Get the Girl” is concerned.

Tonally off right from the start, writer-director Eric England’s low-budget genre mash-up involves an entitled young man named Clarence (Justin Dobies) who opts to take desperate measures when the object of his romantic obsession (Elizabeth Whitson of TV’s “Awkward”) refuses to give him the time of day.

The solution? He strikes a deal with an equally smarmy individual (Noah Segan) to orchestrate her abduction, so that Clarence can then sweep in and save his damsel in distress, who will have no other choice but to repay him with her undying devotion.

But of course what might have looked like a can’t-miss proposition in theory proceeds to go horribly wrong in execution.

Truth is, with his cast of uniformly unlikable characters and the script’s obnoxiously chauvinist overtones, England, who seemed to be going for the satirical vibe of the “Scream” franchise, never successfully lays down a sturdy groundwork for the obligatory plot twists that follow, giving viewers zero reason to care.

“This whole thing has gone to …,” whines one of Segan’s idiot masked henchman roughly halfway through the increasingly shrill chain of events.

Yep.

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‘Get the Girl’

Rating: R, for bloody violence, language throughout, drug use and brief sexual content/nudity

Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes

Playing: Laemmle’s Music Hall, Beverly Hills; Laemmle’s Playhouse, Pasadena; Laemmle’s Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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