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Review: Obnoxious comedy ‘Born Guilty’ just can’t muster sympathy for a miserable pair

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The key to every successful comedy, romantic and otherwise, is having central characters who are likable or at least relatable to some degree.

It’s a basic concept that’s lost on writer-director Max Heller’s “Born Guilty,” a shrill urban relationship satire whose lead protagonists are so insufferably self-centered and whiny, there’s little hope for redemption.

Exhibit One: Judith Weiss (Rosanna Arquette), a social worker and lonely, bitter New York divorcee with no evident filter, who doesn’t see any problem with offering obnoxious, unsolicited advice to random couples she encounters on the street.

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Exhibit Two: Her smug, entitled, equally charmless son, Marty (Jay Devore, doing his best Adam Sandler), a Los Angeles-based junior ad exec — an apple who clearly hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Although a semblance of a plot eventually kicks in — Marty pays his free-spirited, globe-traveling Aussie buddy, Rawl (David Coussins), to romance his needy, smothering mom with unintended results — Heller, a TV editor in his feature filmmaking debut, buries it under the cartoonish performances and a grating score that sounds like it was lifted from a ’60s sitcom.

It all culminates in an unearned, sins-of-the-parents confrontation in which Marty, rather than taking ownership of his screw-ups, instead blames Judith for his pronounced character flaws.

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While the pair obviously deserve each other, they manage to do nothing to deserve a crucial shred of audience empathy.

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‘Born Guilty’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes

Playing: AMC Sunset 5, West Hollywood

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