C-

In post-“Hangover” Hollywood the emphasis in comedy is to out-raunch the competition. There’s no other explanation for an item like this, the very title of which is calculated to pander to the lowest instincts of the audience. Inevitably, it fails to deliver on its sniggering promise. This “Orgy” turns out to be old-fashioned, but certainly not good.

The movie stars Jason Sudeikis and Tyler Labine, a couple of second-stringers apparently standing in for Ed Helms and Jack Black. Sudeikis is Eric, one of those supposedly lovable eternal man-children who populate such stories—a thirty-something layabout who’s long been hosting extravagant parties for a bevy of friends at his father’s beach house in the Hamptons, abetted by his pal Mike (Labine), a beefy slacker with John Belushi overtones. Since his dad (Don Johnson, unbilled) has announced his intention to sell the house, Eric plans one final Labor Day bash—a true orgy modeled after the Kama Sutra, no less.

Virtually all of Eric’s pals agree to participate after some initial reluctance. On the distaff side are Sue (Michelle Borth), the cutie who’s long nurtured an unrequited crush for Eric; Allison (Lake Bell), a psychologist who at first dismisses the notion of the group having uninhibited sex as absurd but changes her mind after dumping her know-it-all boyfriend (Rhys Coiro); and Laura (Lindsay Sloane), a mousy type anxious to break loose. In addition to Mike and Eric, there’s another unattached guy—Adam (Nick Kroll, a young Eugene Levy), a job-obsessed neurotic. There’s a couple involved, too: would-be musician Duquez (Martin Starr), who constantly frets over how he should appear on his first CD cover (though most music travels in other forms nowadays), and his squeeze Willow (Angela Sarafyan), who agrees to participate in response to his belief that it might help them get closer. But the group excludes another couple, Glenn and Kate (Will Forte and Lucy Punch), who have a child and are about to get married, and whom they try to keep in the dark about the whole business.

Writer-directors Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck divide their scenario into two parts. The first, divided chronologically into sketch-like episodes, follows the preparations for the bash and includes such business as Eric’s romance with pretty realtor Kelly (Leslie Bibb), who’s definitely not a part of the orgy-in-waiting, and a visit to a local sex club, where Eric and Mike get advice from Vic (rubber-faced David Koechner), an old hand at such free-wheeling partying. There are a few laughs scattered throughout them, but overall it’s pretty lame, obvious stuff, and whatever humor is generated comes from the enthusiasm of the cast rather than the material. The “count-down” structure, in which titles tick off the time remaining until Labor Day, is also a mistake, since given the lowbrow quality of the gags it makes you wish the movie would just cut to the chase and the holiday would arrive already.

Unfortunately, when the orgy does occur, it turns out to be a pretty tame affair, with little that will shock or titillate even the most prudish viewer. Indeed, it proves the catalyst that brings together all the couples that are obviously meant for one another. Even the ostracized married Glenn and Kate, who show up invited (in Native American rather than Indian garb, ha-ha), make it an occasion to ‘deepen’ their relationship. And in the course of it Eric matures enough to decide to commit to the woman of his dreams. In short, what was intended as a night of wild abandon becomes, in the best Hollywood tradition, the means of effecting the most conventional link-ups.

The picture is technically perfectly fine, with John Thomas’ cinematography better than the material deserves, though Jonathan Sadoff’s score comes on rather strong. And the cast is certainly game, with Sudeikis and Kroll in particular tossing off their lines with some charm and Labine once again doing the motor-mouth hedonist bit he’s been coasting on since “Reaper.”

But while it doesn’t merit the dismissive observation that Adam offers when the party goes sour—“This is the worst orgy ever,” he says—the movie is hardly the rambunctiously raunchy laugh-fest the title suggests. It’s more like a slightly steamier version of a typical network sitcom—“Friends” without many benefits, as it were. And the result isn’t very pretty. Early in the picture, after they’ve ogled a young woman on the beach, Eric wonders aloud whether kids of college age now find guys like them—thirty-somethings still acting like frat brothers—as creepy as they thought people who didn’t act their age were when they were in school. As it turns out, even viewers of far more advanced years—like yours truly—are likely to consider these characters more pathetic than likable, and their prolonged immaturity more sad than amusing.