Good Luck Chuck choked us with the notion of Dane Cook’s enchanted cock; Sex and Death 101 posits the more plausible scenario that women of all stripes would like to break a piece off Simon Baker. The Australian actor plays Roderick Blank, a well-attired corporate type who boasts a respectable list of sexual conquests but who’s about to get married. That is, until Fate — in the form of a secret government-engineered computer program — emails him a roll call of all the girls he’s yet to boink.

Daniel Waters’ film means to probe the dangers of peering into Pandora’s box: this dream scenario quickly curdles when Roderick — whose horndoggery is tempered by a basic decency — realizes that his foreknowledge of any and all impending nookie precludes any possibility of real emotional connection. (It does not, however, preclude the audience getting its fill of nubile females in various states of undress.) There’s also the small matter of the celebrated feminist vigilante (Winona Ryder) preying upon local chauvinist pigs. No points for predicting that she and Roderick will eventually cross paths.

On the page, this all sounds rather clever, and Waters’ hipster pedigree is well-established — this is the guy who wrote Heathers. He’s set out to make an edgier-than-thou romantic comedy with a genuine emotional undercurrent, but his satirical blade is dulled by TV-calibre craftsmanship and a dispiritingly conservative narrative trajectory that takes several wrong turns towards an unearned and thoroughly unsatisfying happy ending.