Having tried out his lazily contrived romcom on (presumably unimpressed) audiences under the titles The Pleasure Of Your Company and The Next Girl I See, writer-director Michael Ian Black has finally settled on Wedding Daze.

Here’s another suggestion: American Pie: Sloppy Seconds.

It appears that Black got extremely drunk while watching the Pie movies, decided to squeeze all his favourite bits into one script, then sent the laugho-suctioned results to an actor whose greatest contribution to comedy was – and will always be – sticking his pecker in a pastry.

As blandly as ever, Jason Biggs plays Anderson, a guy about to ask his sweetheart to marry him while dressed as Cupid. Unfortunately, when he pops the question, she pops her clogs. Hoho!

A year later, Anderson is still wallowing in grief. But for no other reason than to get the wheels of comedy turning, he randomly proposes to waitress Katie (Fisher, the nutty one from Wedding Crashers).

They have never met before but Katie – being lumbered with a boyfriend whose greatest love is charades (Chris Diamantopoulos, in the film’s sole amusing performance) - is desperate to do something impulsive. Anderson gets a "yes".

Okaaayyy... then comes the hard part: meeting the parents.

With her real father (shame on you, Joe Pantoliano) in prison – though not for long - Anderson fails to hit it off with Katie’s frosty mother and stepfather, a maker of Jewish-themed toys.

Similarly, Katie discovers that Anderson’s mum isn’t as cuddly as she looks. But at least she’s spared the details of his parents’ sexual predilections.

Black crowds the crazy circus with gypsies and clownish cops but makes no effort to disguise the roots of his flimsy material. He also telegraphs his punchlines so early that they may as well be delivered by the milkman.

Reprising his Pie act, Biggs is again made to look foolish without doing anything remotely funny, while Edward Herrman steps in for Eugene Levy as the dad with the embarrassing sex talks.

Fisher strives to give Kate some depth, but she’s swimming against the tide in a movie happy to wear its low-brow aspirations on its snot-covered sleeve.

The next of Black’s scripts to hit screens will be Run, Fat Boy, Run, the story of a guy with – get this - marital issues. Is there no start to the man’s imagination?

Elliott Noble