Marketed as a sex-com, Spread is a difficult film to classify, but even harder to like. Ashton Kutcher plays an LA gigolo living the high life via a string of wealthy lovers (principally Anne Heche’s Samantha), using everyone to avoid lifting a finger. Naturally, he convinces as a man who could seduce anyone, while LA is shot so beautifully that for once it looks like a desirable place to be.
Yet there’s something dispiriting in Jason Dean Hall’s look at this tawdry trade, underlined by Kutcher’s jaded voiceover, suggestive of a collective clinical depression. The cast work hard and there’s an attempt at redemption, but it’s hard to forget the shallowness that’s gone before.