When writer-director Darren Stein's awful second film, Jawbreaker, was released last year, few realized what a massive artistic leap forward it was. Don't be mistaken: Stein's inane high-school satire is awful. But compared to his debut, Sparkler, Jawbreaker is Rules Of The Game, Gone With The Wind, and Dr. Strangelove rolled into one. Park Overall (Empty Nest) stars as a good-spirited housewife who leaves her cheating husband and trailer-park existence and heads to Las Vegas to pursue three big-city yuppies (including an embarrassed-looking Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jamie Kennedy) she meets at a sleazy small-town bar. Limping along with the energy and enthusiasm of a terminally ill slug, Sparkler is a failure from start to finish. Nothing works: Its attempts at satire, most of which revolve around such sacred cows as drunken truckers and fat lesbians, are embarrassing, while its depiction of the economically downtrodden is so tacky and hateful that it makes The Jerry Springer Show seem like a daily affirmation of the dignity of the poor and socially disenfranchised. Good movies are supposed to provide more questions than answers, and watching Sparkler does at least bring to mind a number of questions: Why on Earth was it made? Were the filmmakers blackmailing a group of Texas oil magnates? Did it receive some sort of government grant designed to fuel the filmmaking delusions of the chronically untalented? The mysteries of Sparkler's existence may never be known, but that doesn't mean anyone should be subjected to it.