Beyond the entertainment value of Edward Burns playing exactly the kind of guy that America expects him to be in real life, Nice Guy Johnny doesn't veer out of predictable territory, even for a moment. Much to Ed Burns's dismay, he's not chanelling his idol Woody Allen in this movie. Not even Woody Allen does a good job of channeling Woody Allen these days.

Johnny's a nice guy with a dream of being a sports radio DJ. But wait! His ball-busting fiancée Claire demands that he make at least $50,000 by the time he's 25, which is coming up soon. Johnny, being the nice guy he is, obliges with nary a peep of objection and travels across the country for a job interview with a cardboard company. Enter Johnny's philandering uncle Terry, whose questionable moral code and general wild-and-crazy-guy persona introduces him to Brooke, exactly the kind of girl that's just pretty and laid-back and funny enough to make Johnny begin to question whose life he's leading after all.

Oh no! Brooke gets too drunk on the beach and Johnny takes her home so she can sleep in his bed while he sleeps on the couch! Of course hijinks will ensue that will cause Claire to think that Johnny is in bed with another woman. Claire, being the insecure little girl she is, projects her own inclination to cheat on Johnny. Johnny would never cheat. He's too nice.

If you've got all your marbles where they belong, you can probably piece together what happens. Because you're a smart guy/girl/however you identify. Say it with me: Johnny stands up to his in-laws and to Claire! He defends his right to follow his dreams! Nice guy finally stops being a doormat to the people in his life who take advantage of his kindness! He ends his engagement to the selfish brat and gets the girl who he's known for a whole weekend! He keeps making peanuts at his dream job! Yeah! I feel so empowered as a viewer!

Congratulations, Edward Burns. You wrote and directed a movie that has been made enough times to club moviegoers' brain cells into submission. Because mindless drivel like this keeps getting funded and made, people think that this is the best that filmmakers can do. If this film were a dog, it would be an English bulldog that suffered brain damage at birth and thus runs into walls head-on and stares into space when you call its name (wait, don't non-brain-damaged English bulldogs do that too?). English bulldogs are not bright dogs. This is not a bright movie.

Matt Bush is a nice guy in real life beyond this role. This much I can tell. It would've been smart of Burns to just not make this movie, but since we're past that point, it was smart of him to cast an actual nice guy into his movie about a nice guy. Well done. Kerry Bishé does what she can with her eye-candy-that-is-also-the-catalyst-for-change role. Burns as Uncle Terry is really the only character who made any kind of impression in my mind, and that's only because I regrettably know a couple of guys like him. Why are these guys my friends?

I will say that it would take someone as morally reprehensible and self-important as Terry to make Johnny change into someone who stands up for his own happiness. I guess even boring characters in boring movies deserve that much. And vibrant, intelligent fans of movies deserve better than this.