David Krumholtz is a once promising animator facing a terminal diagnosis and the world’s callous indifference in “Lousy Carter,” a droll “My midlife crisis is death” comedy set in academia.

The sort of fellow who’d accept and adopt as his “real” name a nickname he acquired on his high school golf team — “Lousy” — is almost asking for the insensitivity and downright cruelty that greets him the moment he’s abruptly given the news by an alleged “medical professional.” Carter jokes about whether or not he should “plan” on going to his 25th high school reunion to a doctor who abruptly advises him “no” when it comes to “plans.”

“You’re Carter, right?” He flashes an X-ray, offers a “Sorry about this” as his bedside manner, and dismisses his doomed patient to deal with the 20something office manager who is only focused on the bill.

“You guys usually shake people down right after the Doc hands down the death sentence?”

Krumholtz, just seen in “Oppenheimer” and probably most famous for his place within the “Harold & Kumar” universe and TV’s “The Deuce,” is well-cast as the hapless, paunchy 40something taking stock of his life and relationships in his “final days” as a single, unhappy and out-of-his-depth academic.

His therapist (Stephen Root slinging an Austrian accent) patronizingly shrink-splains “Schadenfreude” to him like he’s an idiot. His dry, humorously humorless fellow academic and “best friend” Herschel (Martin Starr) is blithely judgmental.

“The reason everyone is frustrated with you is you’ve diminished over the years.”

Lousy can’t bring himself to tell either of them. Or with his self-absorbed mother (Mona Lee Fultz) in the nursing home. Not when his almost sympathetic ex (Olivia Thirlby) can only muster an acknowledgement that this “man baby” was not a good match for “a real, live adult woman.”

Maybe he can do more than go through the motions teaching this graduate seminar on “The Great Gatsby” with his final days. Sure, the kids are entitled, lazy and argumentative dunces. Perhaps a fling with a smart, testy and witheringly-uninterested student (Luxy Banner) would be a way to exit this world with a smile.

“I don’t feel safe” she half-mutters as he keeps summoning her to after-class meetings. OK, perhaps just getting her to help him re-start this long-gestating animated version of a Vladimir Nabokov (“Lolita”) tale will do. Maybe grad student Gail can teach him how to pronounce “Nabokov.”

Writer-director Bob Byington has always been something of an acquired taste. Dry, wry comedies like “Infinity Baby,” “7 Chinese Brothers” and “Frances Ferguson” appeal to offbeat actors — Starr and Root have appeared in a couple, Nick Offerman seems like a simpatico fit — and make the rounds of film festivals and never find a wider audience.

There’s cleverness and wit and some shrewd observations about life and the sorts of people living it in his work. But there’s a superficiality to the films themselves and the characters in Byington’s movies, something kind of arm’s-length droll and witty but rarely laugh-out-loud funny.

Krumholtz, amusing enough to hold his own in a Woody Allen comedy — if that’s what you want to call “Wonder Wheel” — tests that thesis here, playing a funny but frustrated and frustrating character in a frustrating scenario that he can’t seem to insult his way out of.

When even the surprises and twists are cliches, we figure we’re being had — a bit — by our filmmaker/tour-guide. But when everybody strikes what seems to be the perfect tone for the material, and it’s never enough to lift “Lousy Carter” above the meekly amusing indifference that greets Carter himself with, we can’t help but feel we too are being talked-down “to.”

Rating: unrated

Cast: David Krumholtz, Martin Starr, Luxy Banner, Jocelyn DeBoer, Mona Lee Fultz, Stephen Root and Olivia Thirlby.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Bob Byington. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:17