Movie Nation

This summer’s hits and misses can seem like surprises if you go by things like reviews, muted fan buzz pre-release, limited feedback on reviews and stories about the films on blogs and the like.

But Hollywood creative accounting can balance those books, and that all-important international marketplace has saved many a dog this popcorn picture season.

Let’s start with Steven Spielberg’s biggest flop this millennium, his doddering, dainty CGI adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The B.F.G.” It cost over $140 million, made about $50 in the US, and $60 overseas. As a film typically needs to pull in three times its budget for the studio to earn back its investment when they take their cut, this is a big money loser. Huge.

How Disney managed to spend $170 million for an “Alice in Wonderland” sequel with no Tim Burton is a mystery. The film earned $76 million in north America by rolling out before summer had really gotten going. Poor reviews didn’t help. It made over $210 million overseas. Still, nowhere near breaking even.

“Ice Age: Collision Course” tanked in the U.S. — $53-60 million will be all it finishes up earning, against a $105 million budget. Overseas, however, Fox earned $235 million and counting, putting this one into profit.

“Warcraft,” budgeted at $160 million, earned a fraction of that domestically. Under $50. But a staggering showing for this hashjob of a video game adaptation overseas comes close to putting it in the black — $380 million in less discerning parts of the world. 

“Independence Day” was way past the point where a sequel should have been attempted, but Fox spent $165 million to prove that wrong, and has earned about $390 million worldwide for its troubles. Not in the black, and it won’t end up there. But

A lot of people seemed to be rooting for the “Ghostbusters” reboot to fail. It’s earned over $116 million and counting, domestically, against a $144 million or so budget. Overseas isn’t rescuing this one, as this cast and this brand have little value in other markets. A $60-70 million take abroad added to its US total means this one’s a big money loser. How much depends on how creative the accounting will be. de

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” didn’t hit $100 million in the USdidn’t hit $100 million in the US (budget a head-slapping $133), but did $155 overseas. It won’t break even.

“Suicide Squad” did $135 US and $132 foreign on its opening weekend against a $175 million budget. Figure $225-300 US and smaller numbers overseas and this one seems sure to take a bath. It probably doesn’t need to earn the $750 million bandied about, but it needs to clear $500 and that doesn’t seem a sure thing, not by a long shot. “Batman v. Superman” cleared $800 million worldwide, by comparison.

“Star Trek Beyond” will be the third film in Paramount’s latest revival of the franchise. So they said pre-release. The latest film cost $185 million, has earned just over that, U.S. and foreign markets. It will not stay in theaters in this country long enough to put a dent in the $550 million or so it should need to turn a profit. Overseas, it is tanking. We may never see a fourth outing by this crew.

The best bets this summer were kids’ cartoons (“Finding Dory,” “The Secret Life of Pets” and even the cheaply made “Angry Birds” were fairly safe), with the live action half of “The B.F.G.” costing it dearly with that audience. Comedies and horror made on the cheap — another “Purge,” “Nerve,” “Bad Moms,” “Lights Out!” — did well, generally.

If two Marvel movies were to underperform in a row, the massive comic book movie bubble would pop. Because DC isn’t cashing the same consistent checks. But who knows when that will happen? Not in Stan Lee’s lifetime, I’d wager.

It started strong Thursday night, blew up Friday and didn’t tail off that much Saturday. Warner Brothers tinkered with the finished film for months, altered the marketing to make it seem more like “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Marvel’s version of “Bad Guys get out of prison and save the world/universe.”

And made a general hash of “Suicide Squad,” critics agree.

But hiding the film from critics until it was very late in the game kept this the most anticipated movie of the summer, and that paid off with an opening weekend of epic proportions. Fans ignored reviews and turned out to the tune of $135 million. That’s a bigger opening than “Signs,” than “Guardians of the Galaxy.” It probably doesn’t matter that projections had pointed to a $146 million weekend, and it fell off so much Sat and Sun that it won’t reach those numbers. It’s still got the August record.

Well-played, WB. They made a movie that “Batman v. Superman” made them realize wasn’t working, erred too far on the side of comic book dark. And they marketed the hell out of it to convince people it wasn’t that dark, and that it is better than “Batman v. Superman.” And the fans? They bought it.

“Bad Moms” held onto a bigger portion of its opening weekend audience than “Jason Bourne,” and is a surprise hit — over 40% now.

“Bourne” lost well over 60% of its opening weekend.

“Star Trek” continues to fall off, steeply, but it’s at $127 million now.

The distaff “Ghostbusters” cleared $116 million, but like “Trek” is losing screens and won’t clear its announced budget, domestically.

The kiddie cat comedy “Nine Lives” cleared $6.6 million.

It set a midnight showings record on Thursday — over $20 million. That helped the critically dismissed “Suicide Squad” blow up to an epic $63 million opening day — or opening day plus one.

And that sets the Warner Brothers DC Comics adaptation up for a $140 million weekend, the high end of expectations and an August opening weekend record. Will it be enough for it to break even? Estimates that suggest it needs to earn $750 million worldwide to make money seem a stretch, but it needs to earn and earn on into the school year to put the studio in the black on it. It could happen, but any steep Saturday fall-off could puncture that balloon.

Speaking of deflated, “Jason Bourne” took a pretty steep (64% Friday) dive on its second weekend. It will still clear $100 million by Sunday, but JB has no legs.

The middling “Secret Life of Pets” has them, and will be over $319 million by Sunday. You can’t go too far wrong with a kids’ cartoon. Even “Ice Age: Collision Course” is making money, though at $53 million after three weeks, it stands as one of the summer’s biggest flops.

“Star Trek Beyond” is losing theaters and losing audience, but is up to $127 million domestic.

“Ghostbusters” is also losing theaters and trailing off, but will have cleared $116 million by Sunday. It still looks as if $125-130 million will be its all-in total by the time it runs out of gas. Not a flop, but no sequel is guaranteed when “won’t quite break even” goes into the books.

Another kids’ newcomer, the imported “Nine Lives,” cracked the top ten. Cat videos on the web do great, why not a kitty movie for kids? $6 million isn’t a bad take.

“Bad Moms” and “Lights Out” have turned out to be two of the summer’s low-budget sleeper hits, both in the $50 million and counting range.

There’s much to love in the latest adaptation of the beloved Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novella “The Little Prince”, an animated marvel by Mark Osborne, whose “Kung Fu Panda” (the original) was more visually inventive than you might remember.

A stunning blend of styles, from hand-drawn sketches to computer-assisted visuals with flashbacks made in gorgeous, textured stop-motion animation with models and tactile sets, it does justice to the book while updating its messages for contemporary audiences.

It’s also as easy to see why no studio figured it would find enough of an American audience to be worth putting in theaters. It comes direct-to-Netflix in the U.S., after having been a modest hit overseas. Stripped of much of its allegorical context, it is more of a children’s story than ever. But it’s a bit dry and somber for that audience, without nearly as much for adults to chew upon as the book.

A fable written by a French pilot and expat who fled his country after it surrendered to Nazi Germany, the book has invited graduate student dissection for 70 years.

The film is framed in a contemporary story, a little girl (the voice of Mackenzie Foy) and her stressed-out single mom (voiced by Rachel McAdams) fail to get into the Werth Academie, where “worth” is measured by one killer entrance examination question.

“What will you be when you grow up?”

The answer? “Essential,” as practiced and preached by the Werth headmaster (Paul Giamatti).

The over-scheduling “life plan” Mom moves them to a boxy suburb filled with modernist box houses and shrubs chopped into boxes for a summer of cramming for another shot at Werth. But the one house available sits next to a high-gabled ruin where a whimsically eccentric aviator (Jeff Bridges) resides.

He interrupts their plans by flinging a paper airplane through little Violet’s window. It’s the first page from an illustrated book, “The Little Prince,” about the aviator’s encounter, after a long-ago plane crash in the desert, with a bracing, inquisitive little boy from another planet. She rejects it, at first.

“That’s OK,” Bridges’ best old-man voice says in comfort.”Nobody understands it anyway.”

But eventually Violet, as such tales dictate, simply must hear more about this Little Prince, about the stuffed fox (James Franco) who was his friend, about The Rose (Marion Cotillard of “La Vie en Rose”), the Snake (Benicio del Toro).

This slow and somewhat stately cartoon reminds me of the recent animated version of Kahlil Gibran’s poetic novel “The Prophet,” a last-ditch attempt to capture the magic in a meditative, allegorical and philosophical book by using that most malleable art form — animation.

“It is only with the heart that one can see right,” the aviator lectures. The body “is but a shell.” “What is most important is what is invisible.” The words of a writer whose country has fallen to a great evil, whose world is under threat, seeking solace in the garret of the mind.

The flashbacks, telling the story of meeting the prince and his visits to various other planetoids, where he learns life lessons, are simple and simply lovely examples of the stop-motion animated art. The contemporary story points the child away from life’s “essentials” — which her mother, The Businessman (Albert Brooks) and others hammer into her.

What is life once we’ve lost that child’s sense of wonder? Pretty empty, the aviator intones. Bridges was a good choice, as this character narrates the film as well.

“Grownups — they never understand anything by themselves.” They have forgotten “all about being a child.”

It was all more original when the book, translated into every language and still a best-seller, was new. Not so much any more.

Its remaining messages and its very style make “The Little Prince” more a nostalgia piece for adults than anything your kids would clamor to see and demand Happy Meals toys from. But Osborne’s film has its rewards, many of them our memories filling in what has been thinned out.

And in a weak year for adventurous original animation, it could compete with “Zootopia” for an Oscar, and actually have a shot.

MPAA Rating:PG for mild thematic elements

Cast: The voices of Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Paul Rudd, Albert Brooks, Ricky Gervais, Paul Giamatti, James Franco, Benicio del Toro
Credits: Directed by Mark Osborne, script by Irena Brignull and Bob Persichetti, based on the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novella. A Netflix/Paramount release.

Running time: 1:48

“Tallulah” is just the sort of movie Netflix should be making. No box office stars, an unconventional story, it’s a “film festival” movie — one with little chance of finding its niche in the theatrical marketplace.

But a tale with tiny Ellen Page as a homeless, impulse-purchase mom  written and directed by an “Orange is the New Black” veteran? Netflixable, for sure.

Page has the title role, a drifter whose drifting is powered by an ancient panel van. She and boyfriend Nico (Evan Jonigkeit) dumpster dive for meals and use “any means necessary” to gas it up for the next leg in their journey. Tallulah enjoys their unbridled van sex and dreams of traveling to India.

Nico? He’d like something more stable. He’s in love. He wants a life together, with a future. That’s one thing Tallulah can’t abide.

But when Nico bails, where does “Lu”, as she calls herself, go? She hunts down Nico’s embittered, abandoned mom (Allison Janney) in New York. Nico hasn’t been home in two years, her husband is waiting for her to sign the divorce papers, and she’s not buying into any hustle the perky urchin is trying.

Circumstances put Lu in a swank hotel, where the room-service leftovers are best, and into the clutches of Bad Mom (Tammy Blanchard), a drunken, aging trophy wife in the mood for a fling. But she needs a babysitter, and without giving Lu her name or number or any real instructions, she leaves her naked toddler in the care of a stranger.

Lu, whose unsuitability for this role is obvious the first time the diminutive Page picks up little Maddie, bonds with the baby in a single evening. She decides to keep it, and she decides Nico’s mom would be the perfect helper/advisor in this scheme. All she has to do is pass the child off as Nico’s.

They clash.

“Were you raised by WOLVES?”

“I WISH!”

“What’s WRONG with you?”

“A LOT!”

We’ve been hard-wired by storytelling tradition to look for the character arc in a story, the “hero” and her quest. But writer-director Sian Heder brings elements of her TV work to this script. It’s not really Tallulah’s arc that we embrace. She is impulsive, damaged and immature at the beginning, and so she will be at the end.

It’s Margo (Janney) and the Bad Mom, a self-involved ditz who fails to convince us she sees her kidnapped baby as anything more than a lawsuit against the hotel, who make the hero’s journey here.

Heder gives every actress lots of close-ups, and that allows Page, in particular, to transcend what is more a “type” than a character. Lu is the sort of role she is drawn to — a bit of a loner, social misfit, off-the-grid.

Janney can change a scene with just a look in her eyes, and Blanchard (“Into the Woods,” “Money Ball,” “Blue Jasmine”) imparts pain and fear and longing in moments of drunken cunning (the way she “plays” the hotel staff).

The story is pure melodrama and more conventional than daring. But “Tallulah” makes a fine demonstration project to under-employed talent — in front of and behind the camera. Netflix has found its niche, and it need not include Adam Sandler.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with nudity, sexual situations, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Ellen Page, Allison Janney, Tammy Blanchard, David Zayas, Zachary Quinto, John Michael Hickey

Credits: Written and directed by Sian Heder

Running time: 1:51

No, the reviews weren’t good. They were mediocre to be generous, bad to be more accurate. Look at the Wikipedia page for the movie if you want to see fans spinning a  29% 27% Rottentomatoes rating and low 40s Metacritic tally into “mixed.” Hah!

But do not cry for Warner Brothers, as the makers of the film are headed into Marvel millions for this, the film’s opening weekend. Box Office Mojo is calling it as a $145 million opening. Box Office Guru is hedging his bets and thinking $128 million is more in order.

It earned over $20 million late Thursday night, giving it the chance to jumpstart the process. Word of mouth could be bad, but you never know about that.

August has never had a $100 million opening before, so either way, a record will fall. It used to be a dumping ground for films without the budget or stamina to make back that budget before kids head back to school. But in the front-loaded world of today’s box office and Hollywood budgeting, when films are engineered and marketed and released with the idea that they will make most of their money within three weeks, a “Signs” or a “Guardians of the Galaxy” can blow up.

And with the weak sisters this summer has served up having zero staying power — “Star Trek” is in steep decline, “Bourne” isn’t good enough to hold 50% of its opening weekend audience — big numbers are in order.

It is to laugh, roll on the floor and laugh. And laugh again. A generation raised in the Fox News “never see anything I don’t agree with” era rises up, out of its parents’ basements, for a fine pout.

“Suicide Squad” has fanboys, all over the English speaking world (and a few Germans and Indians, judging from my metrics) up in arms.

The hate mail has been epic. Suggestions that “Disney paid him” are all over my comments on the review. Disney representatives are howling at that one (Look up my reviews of the last “Captain America” or “Star Wars,” kids).

This Seth Burtis loser from Seminole State College even went to the trouble of sending me a Facebook message — “You sir are a fag.”

Hilarious. But yes, Seth, I will want fries with that. Just don’t spit on them. Stay classy, Seminole.

Yes, but some fans, or fan from Egypt, is/are demanding Rottentomatoes.com shut down for gathering hundreds of reviews pounding the latest comic book piffle out of the DC universe. Hilarious. Variety has the story. 

Hundreds of critics, apparently working in collusion, are spoiling their empty headed popcorn picture fun. No, RT doesn’t cherry pick bad reviews to make a movie seem worse than it is. But that’s the gist of their “campaign.”

Wonder how they feel about Metacritic, which is more accurate, more nuanced but almost as mean to “Suicide Squad”? MRQE.com is more discriminating still, and when they get a review up, perhaps it’ll be more to their liking. Otherwise, it’s back to the books. Tiny books with easy words and lots of dark and pretty pictures.

C’mon guys. The cat’s out of the bag. The movie’s a mess, and hearing or reading that from people who see hundreds of movies a year comes along with that. Deal with it like grownups. And stop messing with the Wikipedia entry. “Mixed reviews?” No. @30% on Rottentomatoes is getting hammered. BAD reviews. Overwhelmingly, predominantly negative.

Losing your cool over that isn’t being an adult. It’s being a tantrum tossing child, a sissy.

“Suicide Squad” hits theaters as the most hotly-anticipated popcorn pic in what has been a fairly disappointing cinema summer.

Hyped as this year’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and positioned in that coveted early-August “Guardians” release window, a darkly-comic comic book movie about “bad guys who do some good,” it’s franchising friendly, a way for Warners to recapture the mojo that their darker-than-dark “Batman v. Superman” took away.

But they made that movie by fanboy request, to fanboy-dictated parameters. Keep it dark, because, you know, this is a comic book — serious stuff. This one? They at least tried to lighten things up. “Tried” is the operative word.

“Suicide Squad” is part of that whole dystopian DC comic universe, where Superman’s dead and The Joker (Jared Leto, more dentistry than performance) isn’t. And Batman is Ben Affleck. So the studio was hemmed in there, as well.

And what they’ve given us is a formulaic, blood and bullet-riddled David Ayer (“Training Day/Fury”) superhero thriller starring a high-mileage Will Smith and Margot Robbie‘s butt-cheeks.

There’s a big laugh, about 25 minutes in. Will Smith lands a couple more, and Ike Barnholz adds levity to a corrupt comic relief prison guard. But otherwise, this is a joyless exercise in paint-by-numbers mayhem. Bad guys are rounded up and flung against demons who have taken over some city we won’t call New York and who — like aliens and ghosts and others we’ve seen in too many  recent movies  — are dismantling the center city and spinning the debris into the clouds on an arc of psychotronic light.

Who ya gonna call? Yeah, that.

Viola Davis is Amanda Waller, the murderously unethical government bigwig who rounds up these “meta-humans” just in case there’s a situation caused by someone with Superman’s powers and without his scruples. So the ultimate sniper, Deadshot (Will Smith), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), guilt-ridden fire-flinger Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Aussie thief Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Harley Quinn (Robbie), Joker’s shrink whom he’s made over into his demented darling of a girlfriend, become “Task Force X.”

And they’re needed right away because Waller’s already lost one recruit. The archaeologist Dr. June Moone (Cara Delevingne) was consumed by an evil witch spirit (Enchantress), and she goes rogue, the first chance she gets. The rest of the self-named “Suicide Squad” seems likely to do the same.

Joel Kinnaman is Col. Rick Flag, the Navy SEAL who has to ride herd over this mob. He’s given a meta-human ninja (Karen Fukuhara) whose sword absorbs the soul of every one she slays as a sidekick.

And there’s a LOT of slaying going on in here. Deadshot litters the streets with the bodies of people turned into zombie soldiers. Harley Quinn wields a bat, but picks up a custom pistol when the need for killing speed arises. SEALS and demon soldiers shoot it out on subways, in high-rises and on the streets.

The one-liners must have played better on the comic book page. “Nice ta’meetcha,” Robbie’s psycho-Fran Drescher burbles. “Love your perfume. What IS that? The stench’a death?”

Deadshot negotiates with the Feds for his daughter’s future, his price for becoming a good guy. Private education, all the way to the Ivy League. And if she’s not sharp enough to get in on her own?

“I need you to ‘white people’ that thing.”

Ayer is a good, gritty action director, and absolutely the wrong choice to adapt this. The action beats are taut, but the story arc crumbles under the weight of all the movies it steals from. The casting fails to pop, in most instances. The heavily-hyped Robbie doesn’t dazzle, which explains why she’s photographed from behind, more often than not.

Delevingne fails to register at all. But Kinnaman stands out as the weakest link.

Giving every character a classic rock theme song — a touch swiped from Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” — doesn’t lighten the load. It feels like a desperate retro-fit –more pandering.

“‘Normal’ is just a setting on a dryer,” Harley Quinn declares. But the “normal” the movies in this new comic universe are pushing is bleak and not much fun. “Dark” does not equal “deep,” and even if it did, you have to wonder if all this pandering will actually be embraced by the audience it is pandering to.

If not, mental health counseling for the studio execs who bet the bank on the Dead Superman DC universe is in order. They’re worrisome candidates to become the real “Suicide Squad.”

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for sequences of violence and action throughout, disturbing behavior, suggestive content and language

Cast: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Joel Kinnaman, Karen Fukuhara
Credits: Written and directed by David Ayer. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:00

You have to strain in the first few scenes to figure out that the omnipresent, labored, slurred — let’s just say it — aged narration of Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society” is being delivered by Woody himself.

That’s fitting, as this is as decrepit and tone-deaf as any movie he’s ever made, a corpse of a period piece, production-designed to the hilt, distractedly directed, a failure that hints at The End of Woody.

This is “Radio Days” without the sharp wit, “Hollywood Ending” without the intelligence and charm, “Sweet and Lowdown” with none of the um, warmth of Sean Penn.

Yeah, I’m going for irony here.

It tells an overtly Jewish story of Hollywood in the late 1930s, when young Bobby Dorfman quits dad’s New York jewelry shop and shows up at Uncle Phil’s swank Hollywood talent agency. Steve Carell plays Phil, an over-scheduled shaker and mover who doesn’t name-drop, he name-carpet bombs.

“I’m expecting a call from Ginger Rogers!”

Yeah, he’ll take the kid on — eventually. But don’t call him “Uncle.” Hate to think Hollywood runs on nepotism or anything.

After a botched encounter with a prostitute — “You’re a Jew? A Jewish hooker. That’s a first!” — Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) falls for one of his uncle-boss’s secretaries (Kristen Stewart, his “Adventureland” co-star). And they court, strolling the beaches, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, a favorite taco joint.

Only Veronica, or “Vonnie,” already has a lover, an always “out-of-town” beau. Turns out, it’s Bobby’s uncle. So Bobby flees back East and marries the next Veronica (Blake Lively) to come along.

Bobby runs a nightclub owned by his brother Ben, played by Corey Stoll in the film’s sole believable/halfway amusing performance. He’s a mobster who settles every disagreement with a murder and a corpse disposed of in the cement foundation of this building or that one. The bodies pile up — hilariously. To some.

Eisenberg, in doing yet another leading man’s version of the Woody Allen stammer, has never seemed more flighty and mannered, gesticulating so much he calls extra attention to the lovely outfits hanging off his stringbean frame.

“Sorry, I’m a little drunk. I’ve never mixed gin with bagels and lox before.”

Stewart cannot ably fake an interest in him and is flatter-than-flat in all but one or two scenes. She’s nobody’s idea of what a 1930s beauty would look like, out-of-place in bobby socks, evening wear and gloves. Without the gloves, she shows off the gnawed-down fingernails of a nervous teenager, not exactly cafe social.

Characters occasionally stumble through the wrong name — Karen becomes “Carol” — or forgetfully talk about the $10 they owe a $20 hooker. It isn’t done for comic effect. Well, it certainly doesn’t play that way. Woody Allen is letting blown takes onto the screen.

Jenny Berlin and Scottish actor Ken Stott kvetch their way through their roles as Bobby’s observant New York Jewish parents, letting Woody wallow through hoary stereotypes spouting the Wisdom of God’s Chosen folk.

“Live every day as if it’s your last. And some day, you’ll be right!”

Allen, plugging along, making a movie a year whether it needs to be made or not, should take his own advice. It would be a shame to go out on a dog like this. But the longer he works, the more likely that seems.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some violence, a drug reference, suggestive material and smoking

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Parker Posey, Corey Stoll
Credits: Written, directed and narrated by Woody Allen. A Lionsgate/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:36

With all the books and documentaries about the state of American comedy and how those who succeed at it must first make their mark at “Saturday Night Live,” there isn’t much we don’t know about that path to showbiz success.

Some make it, some don’t. Friends, partners, colleagues and lovers are left behind.

And sometimes, those who do make it step all over/steal from those who don’t. But what matters most, the moral of every story you hear from that world, is making it. You do, and you don’t look back. You don’t think twice about those you left behind.

Comic turned writer-actor-director Mike Birbiglia’s “Don’t Think Twice” is a behind-the-laughter essay in the hard lives of those who try to make a living making us laugh. It’s predictable, downright conventional, considering how much more “out there” his breakout film, “Sleepwalk With Me” (also about a struggling comic) was.

But the tale takes just enough turns off the well-worn path to hold our interest, and finds just enough laughs between the morose “never gonna happen for me” epiphanies of the comics in question.

They call themselves The Commune, and a brief introduction places them within the tradition of Chicago’s Second City. They are six improvisers who act, write, concoct winning characters or bits that they can squeeze into the improvised scenarios shouted out by the audience each night at their Chicago theater.

But they’re losing the theater, some “Trump buyout” of the real estate. Their future has a ticking clock, a race to A) get discovered by “Weekend Live” (Guess which show that is?), B) find a writing gig and/or C) find a new place to perform.

Birbiglia is the group’s leader, Miles, a grizzled veteran of the improv wars, seeing to it that The Commune is “a group working together in the moment.” He teaches classes in improvisational comedy, and pushing 40, he’s still bedding students gullible enough to be impressed by the sad self-built college dorm “loft” he’s concocted for his sleeping quarters.

Lindsay (Tami Sagher) is a 30something trust fund baby who can squire them all around in a Cadillac Escalade.

Allison and Bill (Kate Micucci of “Garfinkle & Oates” and Chris Gethard), Jack and Sam (Keenan-Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs) work at dead-end day jobs just so their nights can be free to chase their dream.

It’s meant to be obvious that only two of this sextet have a prayer of making it to “Live, from New York…” Key, of TV’s “Key & Peele” and the recent romp “Keanu,” is handsome, quick-witted and possesses a killer Obama impression, which he works into the oddest improvised places if he’s heard there might be a talent scout in that night’s audience.

His castmates, by the way, HATE him for that.

His girlfriend, Sam, has TV-star looks and a perky persona, even if we’re never convinced she’s remotely as funny as the movie suggests.

Naturally, they’re the only two offered TV tryouts. The best moments in the movie come from the way their castmates, those “left behind,” react. Their pride and happiness that the troupe is being recognized is almost buried beneath jealousy and resentment.

I like the way Birbiglia shows Jack’s dilemma. He has star potential, but loyalty. He is determined to give his friends every chance to get a break, help them achieve what he is on the brink of achieving. But the backstabbing politics of the TV show get in the way. It’s a paranoid workplace run on a “be funny or you’re gone” model by its version of Lorne Michaels, a soft-spoken tyrant and genuine terror.

“First year? Don’t get fired.”

It’s a movie built on “types” and there’s no surprise when those types behave according to type. But Birbiglia’s underlit, intimate backstage dramedy is overflowing with killer details — the way they buck each other up with a sort of group hug pre-show, everybody telling everybody else, “Got your back. Got your back. Got your back.”

The improvisations don’t often gel, but there’s an epic rescue of an awkward moment when a heckler cuts to the bone with a shot at Jack’s success and the hapless future facing the rest of them.

Watching the players study old movies and TV talk show moments (Hepburn on “Cavett”) to cook up impersonations and surreal bits that might land a laugh is fascinating.

Birbiglia, the sort of comic storyteller that “This American Life” would embrace (as they have), gives Miles a disproportional chunk of the story, forcing him to face the adulthood he’s put off as he tries to impress his high school crush (Maggie Kemper) and fails. Yes, we get that “another one of my students gets my dream job.”  But that, and the last-chance romance hinted at here, are melodramatic cliches.

But he has ably condensed much of what we hear about this world and those in it into an intimate, if conventional portrait of dreamers seeing their dreams deferred when in reality they’ve been shattered, troupers given hard truths about where they stand on the comic totem pole and yet refusing, even then, to give up.

MPAA Rating:R for language and some drug use

Cast: Keenan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, Mike Birbiglia, Kate Micucci, Chris Gethard, Tami Sagher
Credits: Written and directed by Mike Birbiglia. A Film Arcade release.

Running time: 1:32