Men are from Mars, women are from a galaxy far, far away, at least in writer-director Jeff Anderson's dire Now You Know, a raunchy romantic comedy that views the battle of the sexes from the fixed perspective of an emotionally retarded frat boy. A member of Kevin Smith's View Askew-niverse since playing the caustic video-store-manning sidekick in 1994's Clerks, Anderson proves a reverent disciple of Smith's Jersey humor and rudimentary style, which here translates into a mean-spirited twist on bad '80s sex comedies. Like Smith's overrated Chasing Amy, which also tried to pass off crudity for honesty, Now You Know guides its sensitive yet confused regular-guy hero through the minefield of modern relationships, only Anderson isn't nearly so generous to the opposite sex. Starting with the title, which refers to a bride-to-be's unexplained decision to call off her wedding, Now You Know sees women as foreign, inscrutable, and mostly hostile creatures that break hearts while shrouding their reasons in secrecy. And those are the keepers. The others are castrating whores and barflies, trash-talking hookers and go-go dancers, an implanted fantasy girl in a string bikini, and a transvestite thrown in for a lame punchline. Reportedly inspired by the Matchbox Twenty hit "Push," Now You Know stars Jeremy Sisto as a downtrodden young man who gets dumped by fiancée Rashida Jones on the eve of his Vegas bachelor party. After sharing an awkward plane ride to their Jersey hometown the next morning, they each begin sorting through the wreckage of the relationship. Sisto hangs out with his beer-swilling buddies (Anderson and Trevor Fehrman), a Mutt-and-Jeff team who spend their free time breaking into houses and moving things around, just to mess with the owners' heads. For her part, Jones turns to serpent-tongued best friend Heather Paige Kent, who proves her loyalty by kneeing Sisto in the groin and introducing Jones to the man-haters at a lesbian bar. By withholding Jones' reasons for canceling the marriage, Now You Know makes her seem unforgivably churlish, no less so when she finally comes out with her vague and anticlimactic explanation, which is as middle-of-the-road bland as, well, a Matchbox Twenty song. But the film devotes most of its length to ill-timed juvenile hijinks, barstool philosophizing, and sub-Tarantino exchanges on Prince, Michael Jackson, and homosexuality with gags telegraphed from miles away. What happens when a scantily clad babe and her pet Chihuahua meet a sex-starved dimwit and his oversized lawnmower? Those few left wondering are welcome to see for themselves.