“The Idea of You” is a swoony screen romance that skates on the edge of a lot of “almosts.”

A female wish fulfillment fantasy, it almost gets by on a little charm and a lot of acting effort by Oscar-winning leading lady Anne Hathaway.

It’s almost a romantic comedy, but the odd cute bits never really add up to much more than a chuckle or three.

And it almost lapses into romance-novel-adapted-into-Hallmark-movie territory, despite its A-picture budget, locations and wan pursuit of an R-rating that barely crosses the PG-13 line.

Hathaway plays Solène, a radiant and ever-so-stylish divorced mother of sixteen year-old Izzy (Ella Rubin). She’s a Silverlake, L.A. gallery owner we’re supposed to be convinced has prepped for a solo camping trip getaway (an almost comic eye-roller) while the kid enjoys a Coachella experience financed by her super-successful, cheated-and-remarried husband (Reid Scott, amusingly douchy).

Dad is just tuned-out of Izzy’s day-to-day life enough to have a arranged a pricey VIP “meet and greet” with the almost-grown-up boy band she used to love, August Moon. But Dad lets business get in the way of fathering one more time and Solène is roped into taking over as chaperone for Coachella.

That’s where she stumbles into the maturing but still “almost” grown-up lead singer of August Moon, Hayes Campbell, played by singing actor and “Purple Hearts,” “Cinderella” and “Bottoms” star Nicolas Galitzine.

He’s got the fashionable tattoos, a piercing or two and a t-shirt torn in all the stylish places. She’s dressed like a cool mom, but with a movie star’s trademark bangs, billion dollar smile and big anime eyes. She takes notice of him, but he is instantly smitten with her. And she notices he’s smitten.

When he tracks her down to Marchand Collective, as her tony gallery, is called, we get our first sense of his youth and the sheltered nature of a “career” that began at 14. He doesn’t know that pottery and ceramics are “thrown.” But while her daughter might think of August Moon as “so seventh grade,” a former band-crush, and Solène’s already met a fanatical August Moonie (mom-age groupie) or two, she can’t help but be a little swept away by his attention. And by the Big Romantic Gesture.

He buys out her gallery to decorate “my London flat.” He’s laid-back about the papparazzi and fan attention, literally laying back in her Subaru sport maternity vehicle’s seat to fool the stalkers as she drives him to see more art, and then her adorable arts and crafts bungalow.

Could she/would she fall for a much younger man, despite the “hypocrisy” of doing a version of what her husband did — take up with a much younger lover?

“The Big Sick” and “Hello, My Name is Doris” director Michael Showalter had the time and the budget to let this June/mid-March romance unfold at its leisure, with underfilmed Silverlake, Coachella and European vacation locations and a slow seduction that feels almost graceful in the hands of our leads.

The boy band stuff, on and off stage, is convincing if cliched, with the other members and their latest girlfriends/groupies (the movie suggests the latter) barely sketched in.

They brought in comic screenwriter Jennifer Westfeldt to goose the script, but even though her best writing credit (“Kissing Jessica Stein”) might have been the adorable, that was well over twenty years ago. She can’t sass-up a best seller that’s more about the adult decisions that such a “Notting Hill” affair, with cruelly-obsessed fans and a daughter sensitive to online hate, might entail.

But the beguiling, sophisticated Solène is still capable of being a little bewitched by Brit-boy Hayes’ boyish “It’s hard to trust people, innit?” The script patronizingly rationalizes her tumble by showing her 40th birthday party and the inept, “baggage” packed age-appropriate menfolk who might make a play for her, if they can just get over themselves, their “hurt” or whatever.

Watch the corrosive “Upside of Anger” if you want to see how that looks from a rationalizing older-man/very young woman romance from the male point of view.

It takes a lot of effort to achieve the “effortlessness” in Hathaway’s performance of a character seemingly tailor-made for her, but she rarely lets that effort show. She has always been grace-incarnate on the screen. There’s enough chemistry to make them believable as a somewhat ill-matched couple, but the efforts at sexual heat border on romance novel bodice-ripping.

This may do the trick for fans of the book. But for me, as sleek and slick as this all is, a “fantasy” set in romance novel affluence and the heady world of jet-setting celebrity, it never plays. The picture’s “patience” becomings trying after a while.

This you or “The Idea of You” love affair requires an elaborate but silly set-up, and once its up on its feet, it never abandons that dawdling, ruminating pace.

And the third act complications are both perfunctory and something any adult would see coming a mile away, in the story, or watching that story oh-so-slowly unfold on a screen.

Rating: R, sex scenes that are closer to PG-13, profanity

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Nicolas Galitzine, Reid Scott and Ella Rubin

Credits: Directed by Michael Showalter, scripted by Michael Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt, based on the novel by Robinne Lee. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:55