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Why the “plus” in F+? What’s keeping me from whipping out the old “Shit Sandwich” review and leaving it at that? There’s one pretty funny joke at the expense of public radio that keeps this piece of trash from being 100% awful. Instead it is only 99.99% awful.

Vera Farmiga, who was good enough to be forgettably superfluous in The Departed, gives a performance so painfully and embarrassingly bad in Quid Pro Quo that acting students should forever thank her, as people will be able to point to her work here and say, “See? This is what you should NOT do.”

The blame must be shared with the director, of course, and the open-palm-to-forehead screenplay, so lumbering and preposterous and about as subtle as container ship full of anvils dropped from the top of the Petronas Towers.

The final joke is that, yeah, I’d love to hear a “This American Life”-esque story about the people who feel compelled to pretend to be paraplegics. The shallow tale behind the hunt for this story? Vapid and inane.