My tendency to be forgiving of romantic comedies has been faulted by many, and perhaps I am too forgiving. If any of my critics are reading this right now, and you know who you are, you’ll be pleased with my reaction to You May Not Kiss the Bride, a film that, like 2010’s Killers, is a bizarre, borderline extraterrestrial cross between a romcom and an action/crime thriller. This is an astonishingly bad movie – a strained, unfocused, manufactured, hopelessly predictable farce that makes no effort to be plausible, engaging, or entertaining. It would like us to think it’s being entertaining, but somehow, I just don’t see what’s all that funny about a man fashioning a crude pair of underwear from tropical leaves after his bathing suit gets stolen. Not long after this, while still wearing the leaves, he’s slammed into glass coffee table and is threatened by a hitman with a gun.

The victim of these visual gags is Bryan Lighthouse (Dave Annable), a Chicago pet photographer, who sometimes has to fondle an animal’s nether regions to get it to cooperate. His routine is dramatically shaken up when the cat of one of his clients, a Russian woman, gets mauled by another client’s dog. Not mauled to death – that would be too easy. No, instead the cat ends up in a full body cast. Anyway, Bryan is soon approached by the woman’s husband, a Croatian mob boss named Vadik Nikitin (Ken Davitian). He isn’t mad about the cat. He is, however, looking for an alternative to getting his daughter a green card, his attempt at bribing two government agents (Kevin Dunn and Howard Bishop) having failed. The only solution is for her to marry an American citizen, namely Bryan. Under threat of acupuncture needles, Bryan accepts. He must stay married to her for one year; after she becomes a citizen, the marriage will be annulled.

Although it’s repeatedly stipulated that the marriage must be convincing, it’s also strongly mandated that Bryan not lay a finger on Nikitin’s daughter romantically or sexually. This is part because Nikitin’s right hand man, Brick (Vinnie Jones), is his daughter’s intended and psychotically jealous. Be that as it may, Bryan is finally introduced to Nikitin’s daughter, Masha (Katharine McPhee), a beautiful young woman who, despite being raised by two foreign parents, speaks perfect English and has no trace of an accent. Like Bryan, she isn’t at all happy about having to marry a stranger. Still, she understands the situation and is willing to go through with it. In due time, they’re on a tropical island on a honeymoon arranged and paid for by Nikitin. Quite unexpectedly, Masha is kidnapped and held for a ransom of $10 million. He can’t turn to the police, so Bryan is forced to save Masha himself.

Tagging along are side characters who seem to have been transported from the Twilight Zone. There’s Bryan’s business assistant, Tonya (Mena Suvari), a sex-starved and ditzy stalker who refuses to accept the reality that Bryan doesn’t love her ... that is, until she meets Ernesto (Rob Schneider), a local pilot who fancies himself a dashing hero and a Latin lover yet looks as if he has been homeless for at least a decade. Bryan is repeatedly called on his cell phone by his mother (Kathy Bates), who’s under house arrest for slapping a cop. Despite the fact that Bryan has explained the situation to her thoroughly, right down to the fact that he will be murdered should anything go wrong, she can only focus on the fact that her son has finally gotten married and will give her grandchildren. Honestly, is this woman for real?

The only halfway normal sidekick is Ernesto’s cousin, Lani (Tia Carrere), who tried to teach Bryan some dance moves but only ended up getting him into trouble with Masha. Lani, Tonya, and Ernesto help Bryan as he tries to outrun a gun-toting Brick, who has been sent to the island by Nikitin, who is under the impression that Bryan is somehow involved in his daughter’s kidnapping. The rest of the film plays like an awkward cross between a comedy of errors and an action extravaganza, the latter involving a car chase in which Brick and Ernesto exchange gunfire. And then, of course, there are the shenanigans of Masha’s kidnappers, whose identities cannot be revealed without the issuing of a spoiler warning. Let it suffice to say that their involvement is about as mechanical and ridiculous as everyone else’s.

Given what I’ve told you about Bryan and Masha, who enter each other’s lives as total strangers, do I really need to spell out how this movie ends? Romantic comedies are known for their contrivances and predictability, but You May Not Kiss the Bride in particular really takes the cake. It wouldn’t be enough to say that you can see the finale coming a mile away; you can see it coming even before setting foot in the theater. And only in a movie like this can two people on the run find an abandoned canoe, row down a river, happen upon an indigenous Polynesian tribe, and are welcomed with a reception of hula dancing, drum beating, ethnic singing, and leis. The only thing missing was a luau, although they did manage to work in pineapples. Can someone please explain to me why it’s funny that the chief spends the first day and night speaking his native language, only to reveal at the last second that he could speak English the entire time?