“View from the Top” is not the worst film ever made, but it’s so uninspired that by its end, it’s nauseating.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays Donna, a “small-town girl” who wants nothing more than to not be known as a “small-town girl.” But why? Is it her family? The only glimpse we have into her home life as a child is a horribly shot home-movie sequence reminiscent to one that opened “Happy Gilmore.” In this sequence, we learn about her ex-showgirl mother, but nothing more. We have no idea why she wants out of town and why she wants nothing to do with her family.

After being dumped by her Big Lot’s coworker boyfriend, she does what every young woman in that situation does: She quits her job and “thinks about becoming an alcoholic.” Then, a revelation. She sees Sally (Candice Bergen), a flight attendant turned author, on television. Sally tells a shocking secret to Paltrow, that she can be whatever she wants, as long as she works as hard as she can. Of course! Why didn’t she think of that?

So, what does she do? She becomes a flight attendant, doing everything the television tells her to do. She runs out and immediately buys Sally’s book, which tells how Sally became extremely rich as a flight attendant. That’s the real secret the film doesn’t even dare try to explain. Perhaps the filmmakers just feel that we wouldn’t even wonder why a flight attendant can afford a luxurious mansion full of gaudy little trinkets.

The film is full of flaws, but this is not so uncommon in these types of “romantic comedies,” and we must realize that these flaws are coming before going into the theater. What we can expect is some effort from the filmmakers and an effort to entertain the audience and give them the feeling that they got their money’s worth.

“View From the Top” is one of the few films to even deny us of that. It is so shoddy, it plays like a rough cut. Don’t sit there and wonder if the jokes are flying over your head, the fault lies with director Bruno Barreto, who clearly underestimated the difficulty in shooting a comedy. Comedies require impeccable timing and outstanding performances, something that Bruno was unable to inspire, even from an A-list cast.

What Barreto has done is more damage to viewers than one would imagine. He joins the crowd of Hollywood filmmakers to suppress the independent woman by making her a slave to the dominant male. Here’s an example:

The first time we see Donna in a bikini, it’s actually falling off. Of course, this is where she meets Ted, the man we know she is to end up with. He barges in on her changing and fixes her bikini top.

Ted is there to show her how to keep her clothes on. Without him, Donna would be just like her mother, some half-dressed slut without a dominant male to keep her in check. He puts her bikini on with a twist tie, shrugging off her notion for something proper like a safety pin. She doesn’t mind that he finds her as easy to tie up as a bag of buns.

The way the independent woman is portrayed in film is a critical issue in modern cinema. It’s rare that we see a woman succeed independently in the movies. While this is rather meaningless to college students, what about the 13-, 14- or 15-year-old girls coming out to see their idol Gwyneth Paltrow on the big screen? What kinds of messages are these films sending to young girls?

Maybe this is just an unintended message to come out of a disastrous project. Bruno Barreto has shown us something. Bad films can be more than laughable, they can be downright dangerous.