“Sitting in Bars with Cake” is a cutesy but limp rom-com with a heaping helping of “Big Sick” seriousness meant to knock us down off a sugar high it never achieves.

Based on a memoir by Audrey Schulman and thus having hints of a “true story” in its diversified-for-the-big-screen casting (a good thing), that “this really happened” becomes a manipulative crutch for a rom-com that’s not funny or romantic and a dare to not embrace a “cancer scare” movie that clumsily handles pretty much everything that matters.

But hey, the cakes look yummy and Ron Livingston steals it without even trying. So there’s that.

Jane, played by Yara Shahibi of “Blackish,” is the “mail fairy” at the LA music management office where her bestie from Phoenix Corinne (Odessa A’zion of “Hellraiser” and TV’s “Fam”) is kissing up to boss Bonita (Bette Midler, as amusing as the material allows) so that she can become a junior agent.

Jane’s just treading water until she takes the LSATs, so that she can follow her parents into the law. But working at a party-prone office means that she’s designated cake baker. Whatever bar they’re celebrating whozit’s’ birthday or whatszit’s promotion in, baker Jane is there with one of her elaborate cake carriers carrying her latest elaborate cake.

“Fun fact, I actually substituted sour cream and pudding to make the cake more moist!” isn’t exactly a pick-up line, even if Jane is the cutest, skinniest baker of sugary delights in all of Silverlake.

Corinne and her crew are concerned. She impulsively proposes a “bring cakes into bars” strategy to find her bestie a boyfriend, a way to “bait guys with sugar” and her make confectionary skills.

That’s not a bad idea, fake “parties,” offer cake, “meet new people.” But it will be a challenge, as Jane’s wardrobe follows her “If it works for Mister Rogers, it works for me” motto.

But let’s put a map on the wall, cover it with karaoke bars and piano bars, tiki bars and burlseque bars, decide which ones are filled with “actors” or “musicians” or “tech nerds,” and work our way through Jane’s youtube-tutored recipe repertoire.

“Sittings in Bars with Cakes” lapses into montages of the bars, montages of making cakes for the bars, a parade of guys who love the free dessert but who rarely make the leap to digits or (unfortunately) “dick pics.”

You’re thinking, “Well, this might have been ‘Swingers’ from a female point of view, twentysomething female bonding taking us on a tour of (fictional) LA barlife, with a sort of ‘personal growth/find love’ set of story arcs.” OK, maybe that’s just what I was thinking.

But in any event no. And Jane isn’t necessarily pining for the law, if you hadn’t guessed.

Just as that opening act is failing — ever so sweetly — Corinne gets sick, her parents (Ron Livingston and Martha Kelly) show up and Jane’s plans, her cakes, her pursuit of the office crush Owen (Rish Shah), all of that falls into the back seat as the film mimics life in this one important regard. Cancer always has the front seat.

There’s maybe one laugh to go along with the dry giggle or two in the movie’s opening act “cake baking bait” story.

Livingston (most recently in TV’s “A Million Little Things”), playing a body-shop/garage owner with a need to fix every broken or wobbly public chair, water fountain or diner table is funny and nicely complemented by the ever-dry-and-deadpan Kelly (“Euphoria,” “Marriage Story”).

Even making allowances for a man reviewing a film with “young women’s picture” messaging and target audience, there’s no getting around the many examples of botched execution (script and Trish Sie’s direction of it) that “Sitting in Bars with Cake” shows us.

There are laughs left on the table, peripheral characters introduced and ignored and shortchanged cooking sequences in a two hour movie that could use more “cute” stuff like this, more rowdy-barflies-get-cake gags, more of almost everything save for the leads, who click but who never ever set off sparks.

The sad stuff works, just not well enough to make tears well up.

And wasting Midler and Livingston in middling roles with almost no funny things to say or play is just the icing on the you-know-what.

Rating: G-13 for profanity, some drug use, sexual references and thematic elements

Cast: Yara Shahidi, Odessa A’zion, Rish Shah, Martha Kelly, Ron Livingston and Bette Midler.

Credits: Directed by Trish Sie, scripted by Audrey Schulman, based on her memoir. An MGM film on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 2:00