It begins all conjunto cute and jaunty and finishes with a banda band flourish.

But it’s the dull, cluttered and formulaic middle acts that let down “The (Almost) Legends,” a tale of half-brothers and a Mexican band/Mexican road rally racing legacy that they try to live up to.

This Mexican comedy — titlted “Los (casi) ídolos de Bahía Colorada” south of the border — is colorful in its setting, its music and some of its characters, but sadly colorless in execution, a picture that loses its edge and its “cute” when it puts down the accordion.

Our narrator is Valentin (screen veteran Guillermo Quintanilla), banda conjunto king and self-described “The People’s Idol” of Bahia Colorado, a beachside tourist town in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa.

He jovially tells us the story of his happy family in the town…and “family B,” seemingly just-as-happy, working and living aboard the cruising ferry where his band plays a regular gig.

“God gave me plenty of love to give,” Valentin admits.

In town, he races his 1980s AMC Eagle in the annual circuit-around-the-state road rally thanks to help from his mechanic mother (Nora Velázquez). His little boy Romeo dreams of doing that some day.

On the ferry, his other son Preciado idolizes the musician and dreams of leading his own band some day.

Valentin is such a smooth talker than when Preciado’s mother dies, he’s able to persaude his other wife to take Preciado in. But after Valentin’s untimely demise — at sea — things fall apart. Romeo ditches his mom to seek telenovela fame in Mexico City. Romeo’s mom kicks Preciado out, leaving his grandmother to take him in and under her wing.

Years later, the still-cocky but unsuccessful Romeo (Benny Emmauel) returns to try and score some cash by winning the race that his dad dreamed of winning, and struggling band-leader/mechanic Preciado (Harold Azuara) figures he’ll do the same.

As Romeo can sing and his hated half-sibling Preciado cannot, we know where this picture is going. But the middle acts bog us down on the way with intrigues involving a rival family, a sexy rally-driving prodigy daughter (Ana Celeste) and visits with relatives and old allies in search of a winning ride and the like.

The nice touches include losing one’s delusions of your “famous” “almost” legend father and any time any band strikes up a song, no matter how bad the singer. The middling bits are pretty much everything else, including the under-staged “race” that was the picture’s big hook, in the minds of the writer and director anyway.

Emmanuel and Azurra are OK, but the older players, especially Quintanilla and Dagoberto Gama as his still-living rival patriarch give the picture its few laughs. Tiresome gags about rival Don Tasio’s son preferring hair-dressing to racing cars don’t play.

But the many disses and references to “f—–g Americans” (in Spanish with English subtitles) are worth a cross-cultural giggle. And the band bits and musical moments are “authentic” enough to make one wish they’d focused on that more, and on that damned AMC Eagle a lot less.

Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, profanity.

Cast: Benny Emmanuel, Harold Azurra, Ana Celeste, Nora Velázquez, Dagoberto Gama and Guillermo Quintanilla.

Credits: Directed by  Ricardo Castro Velázquez, scripted by Carolina Rivera. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36