‘How He Fell in Love’ wants to be a complicated adult love story about selfish people who do wrong in the name of feeling right. Fair enough. There are quite a few of those stories. They can be interesting and enlightening. (Woody Allen has made a bunch, for example.) However, forcing your audience to spend their time with selfish and/or unhappy characters is a gamble.

If the characters aren’t conventionally likable, then they had damn well better be endearing, sympathetic or at the very least mildly interesting. Unfortunately, the two lifeless bags of disappointment at the center of Marc Meyers’ film have none of those qualities. In fact, there are times when the movie feels like a dare made by the director, challenging audiences to stick with these beige bores until the credits roll.

Matt McGorry from ‘How to Get Away with Murder’ stars as Travis, a thirty-something musician who once had a radio hit, but has now hit hard times. In this movie, “hard times” means that he has a cushy advertising job, an apartment in Manhattan, his own car, a surprisingly patient sort-of girlfriend (Britne Oldford), and regular radio airplay. But he’s sad. In fact, we’re introduced to Travis at the wedding of his former lover/bandmate, which he considers an opportune time to tell her how unhappy he is with that decision. Nice move, jerk.

Fortunately, the guy is generically attractive, so he’s at least able to use that same wedding to catch the eye of one of the few people around more sickly self-absorbed than he is. That would be yoga instructor Ellen (Amy Hargreaves). She’s married and her husband (Mark Blum) is even loving and devoted, just not in the ways that she needs right now! Essentially, both members of the central pairing are stuck in life and feel desperate for a change. They fall into each other’s arms to force that change despite the fact that it will hurt almost everyone else around them. Yeah, they’re real good people…

Obviously, this isn’t the first affair as love story. It’s a common trope that brings extra drama to an impossibly passionate romance, because there’s added tension due to all the secrecy and inevitable pain. Nothing wrong with that. It works. Here’s the fatal flaw with ‘How He Fell in Love’, though. There’s very little to suggest that these two selfish sad sacks are even in love. Sure, they’re both pretty people who like gazing into each other’s eyes and making out while backlit. However, despite all the longwinded monologues about how their love is “indescribable” (YEESH!), not for a moment does it actually feels like there’s much chemistry or connection. They seem to merely be playing pretend while rubbing their bits together.

Perhaps that’s the point. There’s a chance that writer/director Meyers’ vision is more critical than it seems at first glance. Maybe these are supposed to be empty, lonely vessels whose selfish sack-jumping is supposed to be emotionally repulsive in a way that makes the audience question similar feelings and relationships. I kind of doubt it, though. After all, the actors are playing their longing looks and pained expressions with the utmost sincerity. The surprisingly slick production is also filmed with all the clichéd grace notes and beauty shots of a conventional cornball romance. If there’s any sense of irony in play, its either deeply buried or more likely nonexistent. Unfortunately, this movie takes these clichés seriously and wants viewers to care for two irritatingly selfish characters trapped in a relationship destined to only bring pain. The actors mumble quite a bit too, so you know it’s extra serious!

‘How He Fell in Love’ is almost like the indie flipside of those horrible Nicholas Sparks movies that are forced on viewers annually. Although this movie isn’t anywhere near as melodramatic or stomach-churningly cheesy, in its own minor-key, emo heartbreak way, it’s just another gross fantasy of love. In this case, rather than rural Christian monogamy, the fantasy is one of urban amoral polyamory. It’s a fantasy of love as a brief flash of beautiful emotion too strong to contain! Yes, people get hurt, but at least you had that experience and now you get to move on to the next love/victim. There’s one around every corner suited to fulfill your personal needs for that particular moment before being tearfully discarded in a moment of growth without any care for the casualties along the way.

Neither one of these love fantasies is particularly truthful, but both are pursued relentlessly by two radically different types of people. Sometimes living by those dreams works out, but most of the time it’s just a waiting game until reality ruins everything. Either way, it would be nice if the movies perpetuating these myths would disappear. They aren’t helping.