Review: ‘6 Month Rule’ breaks them all

The unrepentant womanizer who falls hard for that elusive perfect woman and sees the error of his ways is hardly new territory for the romantic comedy. Yet rarely are the lead characters in those films as charmless as the one at the center of “6 Month Rule,” written and directed by Blayne Weaver.

Weaver also stars as Tyler, a smarmy love-em-and-leave-em photographer, petulant and schmuck-ish in equal measure. It’s hard to believe that Tyler’s grating, in-your-face seduction style — think a close-talking Christian Slater at his seamiest — would work on anyone, much less the fetching, seemingly level-headed art gallery employee (Natalie Morales) whose rock star squeeze (Patrick J. Adams) stands in Tyler’s way.

Much more unsettling is the film’s none-too-subtle misogyny, present most notably in the routinely coarse references to the ex-girlfriend of Tyler’s sad sack bud Alan (Martin Starr), and a hot blond model (Vanessa Branch) used in story terms solely as an emotionally convenient sexual conquest.

Weaver’s last ditch attempt to upend rom-com convention and rewrite the movie as a skeevy lout’s comeuppance hardly makes up for the clichéd slog that comes before.

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“6 Month Rule.” MPAA rating: R for language including some sexual references. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes. At Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, Santa Monica.