Musical montages abound, covering everything from first date to “find the right dessert nacho recipe” to “See Scenic San Franicsco” to seduction.

Meet Cute? Check. Big Romantic Gesture? Let’s have a couple, ucluding a sing-along. Wedding? Sure. Funeral? Of course.

“Voicemails for Isabelle” wanders all over the place, from tragedy to hilarity, personal loss to workplace dreams to workplace nightmares with a few Mr. and Ms. Wrongs along the way and a Big Secret that’s got to come out.

But “the course of true love never did run smooth.”

The script is a parade of motion picture romantic cliches, indentified as such because our writer-director wants us to know she’s borrowing from the best, “like Noah and Allie in ‘The Notebook.”

“This is like a sad remake of ‘You’ve Got Mail.'” “I’m being ghosted by a ‘Hitch’ wannabe.” Love, NOT Actually,” is what you end up with when you get into some “Notting Hill, ‘Bridget Jones’ sh–.”

But say this for writer-director Leah McKendrick’s Netflix feature. She landed Zoey Deutch as her spunky leading lady — a heroine who keeps her heart on her sleeve and her mouth poised for the next profane put down. McKendrick signed Nick Offerman to play a pretentious, bullying, fake French-accented chef/

And she’s made the most emotionally available rom-com to come along since the golden age of Meg and Julia, a sentimental, sarcastic and sassy stroll through mourning and misery on its way to joy.

Deutch, of “The Outfit,” “Set it Up” and “Before I Fall,” plays Jill, a young woman who’s spent her life speaking her mind, going for what she wants and sticking up for her sickly sister Izzy/Isabella, and that’s turned her into a no-nonsense adult, at least when it comes to dating.

At work, she’s a “prep cook” for a “Top Chef” loser (Offerman) who goes by Chef Bastien and saves his fake accent for the paying customers. The staff? He abuses one and all, especially the women.

Jill endures the insults at work and takes her share of shots at “D-tox,” as in giving up guys and sex because she can do without the D thanks to the dating pool of pretty dolts and narcissists she swims in. Jill manages this San Francisco life because she’s got “the love of my life” to confide in back home in Austin.

And then Isabelle (Ciara Bravo) dies. Her old voice mails aren’t enough to buck her big sister up. Jill makes voice mails confessions to Izzy about her doubts, her stumbles and her fading dreams.

But Izzy’s phone number has been re-assigned. A sketchy, manipulative real-estate agent and would-be “player” Wes (“Jurassic World” and “Everything, Everything” alumnus Nick Robinson) has it.

Wes listens to the voice mails in between scheming how to hang on to this or that arm candy and wondering which laws he can break to get the edge on his commercial real estate competition. The heartfelt messages Jill leaves for Izzy leave him touched. He decides to try and meet Jill. Maybe he’ll change his ways if he does.

The meandering nature of the narrative makes this movie saunter when it could sprint. Robinson’s character is clumsily sketched in, even if he’s supposed to be pretty enough to not let that matter too much. But McKendrick, who plays half of the engaged couple that are Wes’s best friends and his consience, sets up foreshadowing and trips up expectations with it.

We’re treated to an epic takedown of a British “Proactive Dating” podcast (“Douchecaster”) played by Toby Sandeman, Mr. “Hugh Can’t” for those keeping score at home, a long-delayed big confrontation at work and a just-as-long-delayed “When is going to tell her he’s listened to her voice mails to her dead sister?”

Offerman abuses amusingly, Deutch dishes out the melodramatics — even the tweenage version of Jill (Alice Comer) scores Deutch-laughs in her fiery impersonation. Lukas Gage stands out as a preeming pencil-thin-mustached fellow prep cook/baker wannabe and the music rights to scores of songs were secured to make sure this all goes down like lemonade on a hot summer day.

It may borrow from a lot of other movies (“Jerry MaGuire” and the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan hits) and dawdle a tad as it revisits a formula that Hollywood has been loathe to revisit.

But McKendrick handles this with skill, reassuring us at many a turn that we’re in good hands. And in every scene Deutch reassures McKendrick that in signing Netflix’s Meg Ryan, she’s cast this perfectly.

Rating: TV-14, sex, lots of profanity

Cast: Zoey Deutch, Nick Robinson, Ciara Bravo, Lukas Gage, Toby Sandeman, Tanis Dolam, Gil Bellows, Leah McKendrick and Nick Offerman.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Leah McKendrick. A Sony Pictures/Netflix release.

Running time: 153