Think Like A Man Too, out now on DVD

Anyone who thinks Daniel Craig’s Heineken-swilling, Tom Ford-wearing, Sony Vaio-using escapades in Skyfall represent the grim pinnacle of Hollywood’s reliance on product placement clearly hasn’t seen the 2012 romantic comedy Think Like A Man. Adapted from a book of bluntly sexist relationship advice by American comedian Steve Harvey, the film not only has its characters read aloud from the tome in question, but even gives Harvey himself the opportunity to plug his opus on screen, as he steps inside the film’s diegesis to dispense such pearls of wisdom as, “When she cancels a date, she has to – when he cancels a date, he has two!”

A sequel out on DVD this week, meaninglessly titled Think Like A Man Too, mercifully forgoes any direct references to its source material, but otherwise follows the example set by its predecessor to the letter. A group of men led by US comic Kevin Hart face off against their wives and girlfriends in a lazily manufactured battle of the sexes, to determine once and for all which gender is the most obnoxious. Once again taking the reins behind the camera is Barbershop director Tim Story – story by name, no idea how to exert even a modicum of control over a story by nature.

This time around, though, the action is transposed to Las Vegas, where these insufferably self-obsessed guys and dolls must compete to see who can throw the most raucous shindig the night before two of their number tie the knot. And if that sounds like a set-up you’ve seen 18,000 times before, you don’t know the half of it: it takes less than a minute before the film wheels out the phrase “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” without even a hint of apparent irony. Here’s hoping the characters at the centre of this ill-advised franchise also elect to stay put in Sin City, sparing us all the inevitable Barbados-set third entry.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, DVD

Also out this week

The Equalizer Ageing Denzel takes on Russian gangsters.

The Boxtrolls Stop-motion surrealism from the makers of Coraline.

Stage Fright Arch horror musical with brief appearance from Minnie Driver.