Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.

Films as bad as “Book Club: The Next Chapter” are a rare breed these days. Badly written, badly acted, a sequel to a bad movie (“Book Club,” 2018), how did “The Next Chapter” get made? One can only blame it on the ego and apparent clout of the film’s producer-director-co-writer Bill Holderman (“Book Club”) and its storied and notably aged cast.

This includes Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen and several other actors not as much in demand as they were in their 1970s and 1980s heydays. Notably worse than “80 for Brady,” “Book Club: The Next Chapter” uses as its kickstart a ”White Lotus”-like, long-deferred trip to Italy by West Coast book club members Vivian “Viv” (Fonda), a supposedly ageless beauty on the verge of getting married to the Dorian Gray-like Arthur (Don Johnson).

Viv and her fellow members and best friends Carol (Steenburgen), whose husband Bruce has just had heart surgery and is sneaking bacon behind her back, Sharon (Bergen), who is a divorced judge, and Diane (Keaton), who has a live-in boyfriend named Mitchell (Andy Garcia). Like real-life Keaton, Diane is partial to monochromatic fashion. Mitchell adores her.

To the tune of Tom Petty’s “An American Girl,” Viv wonders “how a woman in her 70s gets married for the first time” (Fonda, who has trouble laughing, is 86). These ladies like to hug. The comedy is naturally geriatric. We get knee replacement jokes, hip replacement jokes. We hear of an Italian cook Carol met and his “magical meatballs.” Are you in pain yet? I was. Cue “Mambo Italiano.”

I know we all have to eat. But did Giancarlo Giannini have to shatter my image of him and show up to play a white-haired Italian police officer? Have you heard “I’m a Believer” in Italian? Get ready. The sightseeing is gorgeous to behold. But it tends to remind you of all the better films shot in Italy (“Roman Holiday,” “A Bigger Splash,” “The Great Beauty,” “Cinema Paradiso,” “Don’t Look Now” and more). At the train station in Rome, the ladies hand their luggage (including the ashes of Diane’s late husband) over to a couple of obvious thieves. Viv tediously goes on and on about love and marriage. She and her friends go to museums to stare at the “rock hard” appendages of male statues, if you know what I mean. Remember Gianni (Vincent Riotta) and his meatballs? He’ll be back with them. One of the two writers (Holderman’s co-writer is former Power Ranger Erin Simms) thought it would be funny to make Italian words such as “cucina” sound dirty. Carol and Gianni make sexual noises while kneading dough. Don’t you? Sharon and a guy she picks up at a bar (Hugh Quarshie), however, are caught in flagrante delicto in a water taxi in Venice by that Italian cop. Can you take much more of this nonsense? I couldn’t.

Of course, the gals get locked up after mistaking young Italian policemen for male strippers. There will be nuptials at the end, as well as many hugs. The speeches at the altar are excruciating. Are you ready for “My Big Fat Geriatric Wedding?” I get paid to see this stuff so you don’t have to.

(“Book Club: The Next Chapter” contains excruciating dialogue, sexually suggestive material and profanity)