“Casey Makes a Mixtape” is a wan indie coming-of-age dramedy in which nobody comes of age, nothing dramatic or comedic happens.

It’s a sort of little film festival movie that couldn’t, a period piece that was never fated to pick up distribution outside of its run in festivals. I see it played in Portland, at least.

Texas filmmaker Blake Calhoun gives his lead characters names that all begin with the letter “C,” and the script shows little imagination beyond that. And he appears to have found out the hard way how difficult it is to make a “High Fidelity” tween comedy without the cash to buy music clearances.

Casey (Presley Richardson, making her film debut) is 13 and obsessed with music. It’s 1981, and she uses her boom box to record her favorite songs off the radio — tunes by the likes of Rick Springfield and Journey.

Casey’s Mom (Arianne Martin) thinks she has it going on. She’s off to Paris where she expects her beau to propose. First, she’s got to Pontiac Trans Am Casey to her parents’ house in suburban Texas for the summer.

Casey skateboards her way into meeting Craig (Julian Hilliard) and Carrie (Kennedy Celeste). If she could only convince a DJ at Q-102 FM in Dallas-Fort Worth to live up to their “Texas’ Best Rock” motto and play her favorites, The Police, she’d finish this ten-tune mixtape she has in the works.

“Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” she pleads into the phone, glancing at the wall poster of the pop-rock trio every time she calls Q-102.

That’ poster’s as close as she’s going to get to The Police. That’s as close as we’ll get to hearing that song.

Truthfully, Calhoun (“Spilt Milk” was his) only landed the rights to a couple of classic rock tunes from the era. Spoiler alert, one’s from a band named for a Massachusetts city and the other is by a Canadian “power trio,” and no, not THAT one.

Stripped of most of the music it would take for “Mixtape” to be a “Mixtape” and work its nostaglia magic, all we’re left with is uninteresting incidents decorating the dullest tween summer ever put on film.

The situations and the kid actors acting them out never come close to “interesting,” and the adults show us that the script is how those situations and characters turned out so drab.

Young Miss Richardson half-whispers and shrugs as she narrates the most blase details of her life directly to the camera. Not exactly “Sixteen Candles.” The boy can’t add up to a “love interest” and the “bad girl” (Celeste) is just a shoplifter.

As with “Empire Records” and “High Fidelity,” the most promising setting is the local record shop. That direction is the path this plot doesn’t take. Even that setting has all the life drained out of it. And no, we don’t hear the hit records of the era playing on its sound system, either.

The entire affair comes off as half-hearted and half-assed. But putting it online for streaming could be useful to aspiring filmmakers. Here’s how “not” to make a coming-of-age movie. Characters have to grow, change or discover something interesting about themselves.

And if you don’t have the cash to buy music rights to your period piece, you’d better set it in the 1880s, not the 1980s.

Rating: unrated, pot use

Cast: Presley Richardson, Kennedy Celeste, Julian Hilliard, Arianne Martin, Jennifer Griffin and Brad Leland.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Blake Calhoun. A Loud Pictures release.

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