B.S. I Love You (1971)

A pointless comedy about the romantic exploits of a TV-commercial producer, B.S. I Love You is the work of one Steven Hilliard Stern. As with Stern’s other ’70s endeavor as a writer-director, the Michael Douglas sports drama Running (1979), B.S. gets off to a bad start by asking audiences to root for a vacuous protagonist. Paul (Peter Kastner) screws up an expensive commercial shoot, and then compounds his insolence by skipping work for a long weekend that includes joining the mile-high club with a sexy free spirit (Joanna Cameron) during a cross-country plane ride. When he finally returns to his normal life, he’s rude to his boss (Richard B. Shull), whom he just let down, and standoffish with his girlfriend (Louise Sorel), to whom he was just unfaithful. Yet even though Paul is a self-centered twit who follows his bliss no matter the cost, Stern seemingly expects viewers to sympathize with Paul’s angst during endless montages of the character moping around while sensitive singer-songwriter tunes play on the soundtrack. Things get even less interesting when Paul leaves his agency to work for a company headed by beautiful older woman Jane (Joanna Barnes), with whom he promptly goes to bed—only to discover that his erstwhile mile-high partner is actually Jane’s daughter. Thus Our Hero finds himself torn between three attractive women, all of whom seem crazed to possess him, even though he’s a shit. As if this logic gap weren’t enough of a problem, B.S. I Love You is padded to the point of tedium (thanks to those endless montage sequences), and there’s no good reason for the film to be set in the advertising world since Stern misses every opportunity for satire. At least the first part of the movie’s title is accurate.

B.S. I Love You: SQUARE