smplayer crashes on startup with "Unknown option on the command line: -ass"

[biggerben]

Binary package hint: smplayer

Every time I start smplayer ("smplayer movie.avi") it crashes with this output:

/usr/bin/mplayer -noquiet -nofs -nomouseinput -vc ffh264vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau, -sub-fuzziness 1 -identify -slave -vo vdpau -ao alsa -nokeepaspect -framedrop -nodr -double -input conf=/usr/share/smplayer/input.conf -stop-xscreensaver -wid 85983615 -monitorpixelaspect 1 -ass -embeddedfonts -ass-line-spacing 0 -ass-font-scale 1 -ass-styles /home/ben/.config/smplayer/styles.ass -fontconfig -font Arial -subfont-autoscale 0 -subfont-osd-scale 20 -subfont-text-scale 20 -subcp ISO-8859-1 -subpos 100 -volume 50 -cache 1000 -osdlevel -prefer-ipv4 -vf-add screenshot -vf-clr -slices -channels 2 -af scaletempo,equalizer=0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 -softvol -softvol-max 110 -lavdopts threads=4 noautosub -loop 0

Unknown option on the command line: -ass
Error parsing option on the command line: -ass
MPlayer UNKNOWN-4.4.2 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
ID_EXIT=NONE

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Jan 16 13:49:30 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha amd64 (20100112.3)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: smplayer 0.6.8-2
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 LANG=C
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-10.14-generic
SourcePackage: smplayer
Tags: lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-10-generic x86_64

[rvm (rvm)]

It's actually a problem of the mplayer package in lucid. See this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mplayer/+bug/508561