Women in Trouble

Uncommonly ambitious for a straight-to-DVD dud, Sebastian Gutierrez’s ensemble dramedy Women in Trouble tries in vain to fuse the sprawling, Angelenos-with-problems-bumping-into-each-other subgenre with the horn-dog randiness of a teen sex comedy. If Gutierrez is more successful at baring female flesh than at baring female souls, give credit to a stupid, rambling script that views women as either prostitutes or psychoanalysis projects (or both). Women in Trouble pastes together a series of tenuously connected blackout sketches about 10 women in various states of neurosis, including Emmanuelle Chriqui as a call girl named Bambi, Carla Gugino as a pregnant porn star, Marley Shelton as a mile-high-club flight attendant, and Adrianne Palicki, strangely charming in the impossible role of a dumb blonde with bestiality in her past. The performers are game, but the filmmakers lack the wit or insight to match them.