“Chicken Coop” is a drab indie dramedy about dogmatic parents, children who left home to escape that and “bonding” over home repair as they fight over literally everything else.

Decent acting doesn’t atone for low-stakes drama, low-heat scenes and dated, strained culture war jokes about vegetarianism, “California” and gun owner delusions in Red State America.

Isaac (Noah Kershisnik) and his high maintenance wife Tania (Monica Moore Smith) have shown up to help his widowed Dad, Abe (Mark Bracich) care for his tidy, small mini-farm somewhere in the unnamed Southwest.

The film was shot in Utah, and the father’s name is Abraham and the son Isaac, and Abraham cusses but doesn’t want his son to swear, so make of that what you want.

Dad’s house may be filled with loads of Lowes’ Home Improvement new fixtures, but there’s a water leak that needs to located and fixed and a relationship that has gone years without repair.

Isaac and Tania arrived the day before and didn’t even bother to call, as he has mixed feelings about this homecoming. Tania tries to be the peacemaker and butters up the “crazy hillbilly with a guitar that I fell in love with.” But she’ll have to hide their vegetarianism and other details of their lives to keep that peace. The old man’s a curmedgeon.

His pranks about not knowing where the water leak is, much less the pipe that caused it, where the tools necessary to fix that are and the like show contempt for the son who went West and make his fortune as an entertainment lawyer.

“Got any gloves?”‘

“Your sissy little hands can’t take handling a shovel?”

Isaac has a bitter streak that ties into the fact that the one parent he got along with died, and not dealing with his Dad got out of hand when he wasn’t there for his mother’s final days and funeral.

Tania? She’s here to be taunted about her “fad” diet, her “liberal” state and her ideas about how she wants to humanely catch and move the mice that bedevil the mini-farm when Abe is sure they’ll “kumbaya their way back over here.”

Nobody comments on her California ideas about a winter wardrobe, the 24-7 perfection of her makeup or hair that looks freshly curled and blown-out in every scene.

None of it adds up to a laugh, and the creaky arguments about “safety” and gun ownership and the like are just ways to avoid talking about the real rift here.

And that real rift? It’s as played-out as the screenplay-ordained quarrels.

The “Chicken Coop” of the title makes for a poor metaphor about the limited, but safe and provided-for life this piece of semi-rural America offers and a mealy-mouthed excuse for one more snappish explanation about “where our food comes from.”

The streaming revolution means that every indie film, documentary and import out there has at least a chance of finding an audience and making a mark beyong the ever-growing film festival circuit. But not all of them merit this wider exposure, and the ones that don’t always fall short in the most important element — the screenplay.

Rating: 13+, profanity

Cast: Mark Bracich, Noah Kershisnik and Monica Moore Smith.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Joseph DeGolyer. A Bridgestone Media release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:37