Man can’t escape sex-crazed women in dumb ‘Everybody Wants to F–k Me’

If you think the title sounds messy, wait till you see the movie.

British writer-director Jonathan Schey’s bluntly named “Everybody Wants to F—k Me,” which had its annoying and overlong world premiere Friday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a semi-thriller containing one joke that falls apart almost the moment it’s cracked. 

Lest you still be intrigued, I can assure you the name is the sole provocative thing about it. And pretty soon, what everybody actually wants is to walk out.

Taron Egerton’s Adam is one of those guys who’s conspicuously considerate and attentive to women. An impossible fantasy of romance novels. Handsome and fit, his shelf is filled with books about feminism, he works at an all-female art gallery in London and is laughably sensitive.

“On behalf of the entire male population, I just want to apologize,” he says with a straight face to a bewitched member of the opposite sex.

Of course, Adam’s real mantra is “love ‘em and leave ‘em.” He’s a textbook lothario, and his nice-guy act is all part of a winning strategy to bed as many women as he can, and it works every time. Until one day when it works way too well.

He wakes up confused and delirious after a one-night stand in which he was roofied, and discovers that ladies are now hunting him down in a feral manner — chasing him on the street like rabid animals. He can’t escape them. Everybody wants to, well, you know.  

It was around then when Schey’s movie unleashed my claws. The abrupt editing and its dry humor layered atop suspense, “F–k Me” play like a wannabe Edgar Wright film (“Hot Fuzz,” “Last Night in Soho”) only without the aim of being smart or, frankly, coherent. Or perhaps that was the aim and the dart just hit the wall. 

Without the blazing charisma of Egerton, at once a leading man and a quirky character actor, this tedious film would have no reason to exist. A pro at comedy, Egerton’s shocked expressions make for a few fun, fleeting moments. But the talented star of “Kingsmen” and “Rocketman” is much too good to be trapped in what is basically “Bad Man.”

It’s plainly clear that, in the estimation of Schey, Adam is getting his just deserts. How dare he sleep around! The Greek myth of the untamed satyr — horny goat dudes — plays a big part, which on the part of the filmmaker, shows delusions of intellectual grandeur on a monumental scale. Adam is compared to one of those literally horned dogs. 

The major narrative question, though, is “how exactly did this happen to Adam?” 

Schey has choppily pasted together a series of escalating situations, including a couple of taboo ones, en route to the answer while wrongly assuming our laughter will ramp up along with them. Adam’s quest to solve the mystery of his pheromonal affliction is static and stupid. 

No one believes him, and he descends into what appears to others as madness, like he’s claiming to have been abducted by aliens. His friends, like his lesbian bestie Emma (Charly Clive) are weirded out. How else is one supposed to react when a person says, with the out-of-breath terror of being pursued by a serial killer, “Everybody wants to f—k me.”  

The movie stays on that exhausting gear until the disappointing end. 

The ultimate resolution is such a letdown. Insects are involved. It is at the same time obvious and nonsensical, and as unsatisfying as a drunken one night stand. Like the worst of those, the whole experience is best forgotten.