Writer-director Mike Binder (Blankman) stars in The Sex Monster, a comedy about the sort of sexual humiliation that follows when a woman (Mariel Hemingway) lured into a threesome by her boorish husband (Binder) discovers that she enjoys having sex with women and doesn't intend to stop. It's a reasonably promising premise, and there may be a good movie to be made from the set-up, but The Sex Monster isn't it. Rather than dealing with the emotional issues inherent in such a situation, then letting the humor flow from real anguish (as Being John Malkovich did), The Sex Monster is content to stay light and idiotic. That might have worked were it an effective comedy, but it's not. Instead, it's smug and lazy, filled with cardboard characters (Binder is an unappealing sitcom stooge, while Hemingway is defined entirely by her sexuality), strained farce, and obvious observations about human nature. Embarrassment, humiliation, and the awkwardness that accompany losing control can be potent fodder for comedy, but The Sex Monster is itself awkward and embarrassing, and not the least bit funny. Like the films of fellow cinematic antichrists Eric Schaeffer and Myles Berkowitz, The Sex Monster invites an almost personal hostility toward its maker, disdain derived from having to sit through nearly two insufferable hours of one irritating little man's bad ideas.