Released this week on DVD: "I Hate Valentine's Day"

Grade: D

Genevieve (Nia Vardalos) and Greg (John Corbett), the conflicted lovebirds in the bottom-drawer romantic comedy I Hate Valentine's Day, may be in their 30s, but they play the game of romance with the finesse of sixth graders in the spin-the-bottle phase of hormonal exploration.

Genevieve, who owns a Brooklyn flower shop called Roses for Romance, has contrived a code of serial courtship in which she terminates each budding relationship after five dates, before she can be seriously hurt.

Greg, a former lawyer from Atlanta, has opened a nearby restaurant called Get on Tapas, whose cutesy-poo name, which nobody seems to get, says everything about the movie's moronic level of wit.

Vardolos, who directed, plays her character like a walking smiley-face button. Accompanied by two chirping gay Stepin Fetchits, Genevieve is so "on" that when her rules backfire and the fatuous grin is finally wiped off her face, your impulse is to applaud. His thin lips twisted into what seems like a sneer, Corbett (Vardolos's co-star in My Big Fat Greek Wedding) squints through the role of the doltish restaurateur who wreaks havoc by dutifully following her rules.

Their romance proceeds like clockwork until it is consummated with a two-night sleepover, which she interprets as their fourth date and he (after the second night) as their fifth. It takes the last third of the movie to resolve their disagreement, which is settled on Valentine's Day, exactly a year after the story begins.

You might blame Nora Ephron, whose screenplay for When Harry Met Sally established the formula that I Hate Valentine's Day runs into the ground. Compared with this, Ephron is Chekov.