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“Everyone in this story is guilty of something.”

With the exception of bland do-gooder/ dream girl Nina Pennington (Selena Gomez), all of the characters in Behaving Badly seem desperate to live up to — or rather down to — the movie’s title. The plot revolves around strippers, nuns, dead Latin teachers, and Lithuanian mobsters, so it’s clear the filmmakers were going for mindless raunch. But instead of a gleefully debauched 97 minutes, we get “comedy” that lacks wit and laughs that feel totally uninspired.

“Men around here’ll write you off after 40, so I know they’ll bet against us. All we have to do is bet on ourselves to win.”

The conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that meaty roles for women quickly dry up when actresses reach a certain age. So director Susan Seidelman (She-Devil, Desperately Seeking Susan) and the stars of The Hot Flashes — a well-meaning, by-the-numbers sports comedy — deserve credit for at least trying to take their cinematic destinies into their own hands.