‘Lampoon’ digs deep, comes up shallow

“National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers” is a shapeless mass of crude sight gags barely worthy of the new release shelf, let alone theatrical distribution.

There are fewer laughs to be found in “Gold Diggers” than precious metals at a curbside jewelry sale, unless your appetite for jokes about libido-crazed elderly women hasn’t been sated by the Farrelly oeuvre.

Our heroes are a couple of young jerks, Cal (Will Friedle) and Lenny (Chris Owen), chasing the American dream, or as they put it, “big bucks, cool parties, fast cars and women.” They just don’t want to have to work for it.

Undaunted by a prison stint, Cal and Lenny don rabbi and nun disguises and confront a pair of silver-haired yentas, who proceed to beat them senseless.

But while the women, Doris (former Woody Allen leading lady Louise Lasser) and Betty (Renee Taylor, an Oscar- nominated writer-actress), may appear to be moneyed, they actually are broke. Heirs to a condom empire, they have an inheritance stashed away by their WWII-combat-shocked Uncle Walt.

Instead of going to a lawyer to prove the man overseeing their estate is mentally incompetent, the ladies bail their assailants out of jail, with the plan to marry them and bump them off for life insurance. Cal and Lenny go with the courtship, believing their brides will make the grave soon and they can collect on an assumed fortune.

What follows is a series of set pieces, endlessly riffing on the fact that the sweet old ladies are actually sexual predators, terrorizing their prey with whips, handcuffs and dessert toppings. When the spouses do try to kill each other, they wind up taking out plumbers and Asian landscapers instead. Ugh!