“Breakin’ All the Rules” begins with a dog pee gag, which in movie terms is like starting the day with a vodka martini — it’s rarely a good idea.

Presumably, writer-director Daniel Taplitz wants the incontinent pooch to function as some sort of metaphor for the young, attractive, romantically mixed-up characters who populate his movie. If so, I'm still waiting for the kicker. Clever if over-written, ‘‘Breakin’ All the Rules’’ is a cynical, sinuous comedy that exposes a few ugly truths about courtship and dating, but offers little in the way of clarity or substance.

That said, there are worse ways to amuse oneself than watching Jamie Foxx (‘‘Any Given Sunday’’) execute a freestyle tap dance on Taplitz’s stiff, uneven screenplay. Foxx plays Quincy Watson, a dispirited magazine editor who grudgingly accepts hatchet man duties from his wormy, ineffectual boss (Peter MacNicol) during a wave of downsizing. Compounding his troubles, Quincy is dumped by his fashion model fianceé (Bianca Lawson), who jets off to Paris with his best man.

Crushed, Quincy decides to mingle the two experiences and pen a how-to manual about dumping your lover — one ‘‘based on the latest psychological employee research.’’

Naturally, the book — which offers sulking strategies and tips on break-up venues — is a commercial smash. It also makes a neurotic mess of everyone around him, touching off a farce of deception and mistaken identities involving his playboy cousin (Morris Chestnut), his cousin's girlfriend (Gabrielle Union from ‘‘Bring It On’’) and a determined gold-digger (Jennifer Esposito) who proves immune to Quincy's break-up tactics.

Many of the dating foibles in ‘‘Breakin’ All the Rules’’ ring true, particularly the defensive warfare-style posturing that cagey singles adopt to protect themselves from embarrassment and heartbreak. There are uglier truths, such as the common tendency to reject people merely because they offer unconditional love. Taplitz seems to have based most of his character dynamics on Groucho Marx’s old saw that ‘‘I wouldn't want to be part of any club that would allow me as a member.’’

Disappointingly, neither the characters nor the filmmaker prove capable of transcending these unsavory themes, leaving us with a bitter, unpleasant aftertaste and the sense that the final romantic pairings are impermanent at best.

Objectionable, too, is the token casting of MacNicol, whose sole function as the resident fool recalls some of the more flippant racial stereotypes of Hollywood's golden era. Stepin Fetchit might be dead, but his spirit lives on.