Those uncomfortable with films that include a token Christian only so as to mock his naïveté or set his tunnel-vision off against the more enlightened perspective of a central character will likely be insulted by the presence of “Corny,” a Christian security guard whose efforts to invite discount store clerk Justine to a Bible study end first in disinterest and later in cursing.

Viewers who consider adultery under any circumstances to be not only unpleasant but, dare I say it, wrong will likely be dismayed by Justine’s ongoing affair with a stock boy and her one-time hay roll with a brother-in-law who threatens to reveal her affair if she doesn’t sleep with him too.

The feature of this film which may outrage viewers the most, however, is something far less obvious but more insidious than a single character or series of events. This fatal factor is the film’s pervasive, darkly comic tone.

Don’t get me wrong. I can appreciate dark comedy when it satirizes the pompous, the hypocritical, or the sleazy—individual character types deserving of a good poking and prodding. Or when it laughs more broadly and justly at our society’s obvious weak points, at targets like the American government’s hawkish paranoia (Dr. Strangelove) or our over-reliance on television (The Cable Guy).

No, what irks me is when movies satirize something desperately in need of intervention and real compassion, something like modern marriage (The War of the Roses), individuals with intellectual disabilities who are trying to better themselves (Pumpkin), or bored and unhappy married women whose failed dreams and resulting apathy make them desperate.

Unlike Thelma and Louise and The Hours, which at least take this kind of angst seriously, The Good Girl ends up making fun of the very heroine it initially makes us pity.

The filmmakers demand our laughter not only after presenting justifiably amusing incidents, including Justine’s half-hearted attempt to poison her boyfriend Holden with some toxic blackberries, and that boyfriend’s mawkish, juvenile plaint that only Justine “gets him,” but also asks us to chuckle when Justine tries to turn things around in her life. Her efforts to reignite intimacy in her marriage, to drop her affair with Holden, and to get pregnant are all made absurd by her ridiculously naïve, drug-addicted husband and her histrionic, suicidal lover. (Check out the movie for details, if you dare.)

What begins as a poignant, Ibsenesque study of a problem marriage becomes a farce that mocks instead of compassionating its central characters. Viewers are likely to come away reassured that such unhealthy relationships are not only frequent but inevitable, not to mention irredeemable.

Mightn’t there be some issues, some social crises that so demand our compassion and action that it becomes fundamentally wrong to make fun of them?

Outraged counterarguments are welcome.