You know the old saying about judging a book by its cover? An Information Age correlate might go "never judge a movie by its Web site." Case in point: the Web site for the new film Forty Days and Forty Nights. With its links to organizations that purport to discuss sexual abstinence, you might go away thinking that there was something worthwhile about the movie. You would be wrong. The kind of wrong that would have you wanting to sue someone to get back the two hours and nine bucks you wasted. The kind of wrong that leaves you stupefied at how a group of otherwise intelligent people can get such an important subject so wrong.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Forty Days and Forty Nights is the newest entry in a line of films that extends at least as far back as the 1981 film Porky's and forward through American Pie and American Pie II. Known variously as the "teen sex comedy" or the "horny teenager movie," these movies depict the male adolescent's pursuit of sex. In these films "adolescent" describes a state of mind and emotional development ― or lack thereof ― more than it does an age group. The guys can be high school students, frat boys, or, as in the case of Forty Days, in their mid twenties. These movies' stock in trade are crude, vulgar, and sometimes cruel, jokes about sex, bodily functions, and human anatomy ― all of which are present in Forty Days.

This latest example of the genre tells the story of Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett), a Web designer living in San Francisco. After a painful ― is there any other kind in the movies? ― breakup with his girlfriend, Matt becomes fantastically promiscuous. But if the goal is to make Matt feel better, it's not working. He starts having anxiety attacks during sex. He sees a black hole opening in the ceiling above the bed and threatening to swallow him.

In desperation, Matt goes to confession and tells his story to what appears to be a priest but in fact is his older brother, a seminarian two years away from ordination. It's during one of these visits, on Ash Wednesday as it turns out, that Matt decides that what he needs to do is give up sex, and all sexually related conduct (I'm trying to be discreet here) for Lent. He hopes that this period of abstinence will bring him "clarity" and self-understanding. His seminarian brother is less than supportive. While you would expect a man who has taking an oath of celibacy to be supportive of anyone's pledge to abstain from sex outside of marriage, all Matt's brother has to say is "you won't last a week."

Matt's friends are even less supportive. After learning about his vow, they create a Web site that provides up-to-the-minute news about the status of his vow. They start a betting pool where, for $50 a pop, people can pick the date of his inevitable failure. Female co-workers try to seduce him into breaking his vows. Finally, as if to confirm that the entire world is conspiring against him, Matt meets a girl, Erica (Shannyn Sossamon), he really likes and who really likes him. Instead of simply telling her about his vow, he keeps the truth from her, which confuses her and needlessly complicates the nascent relationship.

Even before it opened, Forty Days was the subject of controversy. Some Catholics objected to using one of their most important spiritual practices as the basis of a comedy, especially a sex comedy. Patrick Scully of the Catholic League accused Miramax, the film's distributor, of "trivializing" Catholics and their beliefs for the sake of entertainment. He asked people to "imagine the reaction if they had made the lead character a Muslim who gives up sex from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan and is tempted during the day?"

Scully has a point. While the movie isn't about religion per se, its plot and its title are taken from Christianity's most sacred season. That being the case, you would hope for some respect, but you'd hope in vain. To be fair, the film does accurately depict why Catholics, as well as Orthodox, Anglicans and Lutherans, make sacrifices during Lent: in imitation of Christ's 40 days in the wilderness that culminated in his tempting by Satan. But apart from that, the film's attitude towards religion can best be described as flippant. This is especially true of its depiction of the seminarian brother. In addition to being unsupportive of Matt's efforts, he's just as sexually obsessed as every other male in the film. At one point, Matt enters his office only to find him making out with a nun.

But if Forty Days' attitudes toward religion can be called flippant, its depiction of human sexuality and the human person, especially males, are even less flattering. By the time the 35th day rolls around, Matt is grimacing in a way that might cause the audience to wonder whether he gave up sex or bowel movements for Lent. His hands are shaking and he's hallucinating ― symptoms associated with detoxification, not chastity.

I get the joke but nevertheless this depiction of sexuality betrays an impoverished understanding of that subject that reduces a great and mysterious gift to a mere bodily function ― one that isn't all that different from eating, drinking or even going to the bathroom. If sex has any function other than as a release of hydraulic pressure, it's lost on the makers of the film.

Then there's the way the nearly every person in Forty Days, including Matt's seminarian brother and even his parents, are in thrall to their sex drive and seem to think and talk about little else. There's no suggestion, except for Matt's Lenten exercise, that people can exercise mastery over their sexual drives. Instead, men are like big horn sheep or garter snakes during mating season ― once the hormones kick in, it's pure instinct. (In fact, "sex" doesn't describe what's going on as much as "rutting.")

Yeah, I know. It's a raunchy sex comedy. So is American Pie II. But that film didn't have a title, plot device, or Web site that suggested otherwise. If Forty Days had taken these seriously, perhaps Matt could have learned something about how sex fits into the entirety of our lives. Having to postpone sex with the girl he cares about could have given him some insight into the relationship between sex and love. Instead, we're left with the conclusion that the end ― in the sense of goal or purpose ― of a relationship is sex, period. Two people deciding that they "like" each other is simply a prelude to an orgasm.

Both sex and people would fare better in a film that better understood the tradition from which Forty Days takes it title and premise. In the Christian tradition, our sexuality is a big part of what it means to be human because it is subject to both our reason and our sense of right and wrong. Instead of diminishing sex, this restraint elevates it. It provides the opportunity to transcend self-gratification and be filled with meaning. It turns what can be a selfish and almost Darwinian act into an act of self-giving.

None of this was present in Forty Days. I seriously doubt that anything like this crossed any of the filmmakers' minds. That's why, in the end, this sex comedy turns out to be anti-sex, at least the kind the sex that rises above the stuff you see on the Discovery Channel, and the kind of movie we should all abstain from. Not only because it's raunchy, but because it's mindless.