Six years ago, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” took a good deal of thumping from critics, who ridiculed its overt simplicity as little more than outright silliness. Yet no one could deny how the movie connected with an audience of millions looking for a fun Friday night diversion. In the years since, the film has spawned a small army of family-oriented romantic comedies, each steeped in some sort of ethnic or religious tension, each looking to take a slice of the “Greek Wedding” box office cake. But time and again, these formula imitators have proved unable to replicate the earnest, open heart of their inspiration.

And so it goes with “David & Layla,” the new romantic comedy opening today at Quad Cinema. Jay Jonroy’s film is a wafer-thin product that you could call “My Desperate Angry Rich Vasectomy Wedding.” The film is allegedly inspired by real events, but while the plot points may indeed have some roots in reality, surely the pacing, the tone, and chronology have been manipulated to no end. How else to explain the film’s preposterous, and at times incoherent, progression?

Consider this: Date number one between David Fine (David Moscow) and Layla (Shiva Rose) involves David popping some drugs — drugs that, for a moment, he seems to consider using on her — and trying to get into Layla’s pants. Date number two leaps forward to a marriage proposal. Date number three revolves around a meeting of the families, at which predictable awkwardness ensues. Did I forget to mention that David is the sex-starved Jewish host of a reality TV show on which he interviews people about their sex lives? And did I also forget to mention that Layla is a shy Kurdish refugee whom David first sees on the street while he’s shooting a spot on how spicy food affects one’s sex life? Strangely enough, Layla doesn’t appreciate the televised humiliation.

Say what you will about “Greek Wedding” — at least the motivations of its romantic leads were pure. On Layla’s end, it isn’t love at first sight — it’s love at the first sign of a deportation notice. Frantic to stay in America, and aware she has only 30 days before she is to be deported, Layla must force herself to be receptive to David’s advances.

But it is David’s motivations that push the film beyond simply being messy and into a chauvinist mentality that borders on offensive. Early on, we see David in bed with his Jewish girlfriend Abby (Callie Thorne, the movie’s most entertaining presence), and almost instantly she is established as a veritable walking castration. A kickboxer who hates to cuddle, forces David to use a condom (the horror!), and all but marches him to the doctor to seek a vasectomy, Abby is an unmistakable force of evil.

But what’s far worse is that David then seeks to reassert his manhood by proving he can bag that hot Muslim chick. From the first time Layla walks by, dropping a bag of black bras, David is entranced by the allure of the foreign. Indeed, the entire movie fetishizes Layla as the “other,” the woman with the unfamiliar skin color, attire, and religion. Heck, she won’t even have sex out of wedlock.

David and Layla’s love is predicated on nothing — merely a fawning boy and a desperate illegal alien — and their families are clichés in the worst way. So as love that we cannot understand is professed, and families interrupt the romance in ways that we cannot believe or get excited about, “David & Layla” proves that it has all the needed ethnic and religious conflicts, but nary a hint of the romance and comedy, that made “Greek Wedding” something worth caring about.

ssnyder@nysun.com