Movie Nation

If romantic comedies were easy, Hollywood would be churning them out like comic book adaptations. But they aren’t.

That magical blend of wit, warmth, chemistry and comedy evades pretty much everybody who sets out to make the perfect “date movie.” The droughts between good ones can last years.

So there’s no dishonor in taking a shot at the real L-word with “No Stranger Than Love.” It aims for the heart, but misses. It reaches for existential but never manages much more than “twee.”

This rom-com starts with great promise and a great premise. Lucy (Alison Brie of TV’s “Community”) is The Town Catch. Everybody, and I do mean EVERYbody pines for Miss Lucy.

One of her art students (Dylan Everett) at Spot Valley High is full of come-on anecdotes about how much older Josephine was than Napoleon. The principal at her school tugs her into a supply closet to propose that they run off to Uganda together.

A nerdy English teacher (Mark Forward) foists books on her and probably writes her poetry.

Even the town drunk (Paul Fateux) makes his pitch in the parking lot after school.

“When you see me from now on, could you look a little deeper?”

She’s the daughter of the mayor, three-time Queen of the Jamboree, so even the garbage men flirt with her and an over-eager cop is in the habit of pulling her twee baby blue Chevette over to ask for a date.

“It is against the law…to look THAT good!”

But it looks like Lucy has made her choice — in secret. That’s how she and Coach Clint Coburn (Colin Hanks) meet,  because he’s married. They may have something, though she’s a bit “frugal” about using the word “love.”

They’re just about to consummate when a huge hole opens in her living room floor and Clint drops into the dark void. They can talk, but she can’t see him and he has no idea what manner of limbo he’s tumbled into.

“No Stranger Than Love” doesn’t quite fall off a cliff with Clint, but almost. Interest fades as things turn predictable and dull.

Lucy takes off to find somebody who can keep a secret and give her a hand figuring this out and rescuing Clint from the abyss. And that’s where she meets the dark-jacketed, stubbled, I-Wear-My-Sunglasses-at-Night stranger, played by Justin Chatwin of TV’s “Shameless”. The new guy in town is looking for Clint.

Nothing that follows is the least bit interesting — not Lucy’s “girls’ group” confessional gabfests, not the stranger’s quest (he is smitten, too), not Lucy’s half-hearted search for the meaning of why a hole would open in the floor and take her would-be lover out of reach, not the search for the missing Clint nor Clint’s wife’s distress at what her husband might have been up to.

Brie doesn’t set off sparks with Hanks, which is exactly the point, and sets off even fewer with Chatwin, which isn’t.

Love the set-up, appreciate the nice dimensions Brie and screenwriter Steve Adams give Lucy in the film’s opening. But there’s precious little in the performance or the character’s inner life to justify a whole town’s love. Lust, maybe.

Lucy isn’t as desirable as she’s set up to be, the town “characters” aren’t particularly funny, and “No Stranger Than Love” just isn’t as  romantic or fantastical as the romantic fantasy it wants to be.

There’s a big hole in the middle of the movie, too.

MPAA Rating : R for language

Cast: Alison Brie, Justin Chatwin, Colin Hanks
Credits: Directed by Nick Wernham, script by Steve Adams. A Momentum/eOne release.

Running time: 1:27

Apparently, parents are a bit shrewder about reading reviews than weekend box office prognosticators thought.

Predictions that “The Angry Birds Movie” would earn a typical-for-3D animation $45 million on its opening weekend went by the wayside on Saturday, the most important day for family films for kids. “Angry Birds” fell off from a $44 million pace on set Friday to a $38 million pace by Saturday night. 

Will it fall off more Sunday? Word of mouth is a scary thing. As are negative reviews.

“Neighbors 2” will manage $22 million, a bit of a bump from yesterday’s projections. That’s some consolation for an R-rated comedy that had passable reviews, a proven brand and expectations of $35 million back in the halcyon days of say, Wed.

“The Nice Guys” has to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year. A funny, critically endorsed action comedy in the Shane Black “Lethal Weapon/48 Hours” mold, it will hit $11 million on its opening weekend. It didn’t reach a younger audience, and older audiences gave up on Russell Crowe a decade ago. It won’t have legs, because this isn’t “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” Ouch.

Crowe should look for a TV detective show — on cable. Stick a fork in him. Done.

“Money Monster” is enjoying a solid second weekend. “Captain America” slips to #2, not bad after three weeks.

“The Lobster,” the first film from indie darlings A24 that I haven’t cared for, opened a little wider and is doing a robust $16,000 per screen. It’s not “Room” so the ceiling is low for this self-consciously obscure art film.

A bad weekend for any potential re-launch of Russell Crowe’s big screen career. That April “Saturday Night Live” bombing is followed by a somewhat over-rated, financially underwhelming “Nice Guys” opening weekend.

Great, or at least consistently positive reviews aren’t helping this violent action comedy get to $11 million, according to Deadline.com’s prognosis, based on Thursday night/all day Friday numbers. Wow. Predictions ranged in the $15-20 million range, thanks to the reviews, the laughs and Ryan Gosling. Nope. Warners’ gamble didn’t pay off. Nobody wants to go back to the Shane Black/Joel Silverman ’80s.

“The Angry Birds Movie” was the worst reviewed wide release to open this weekend, and it, being animated and in 3D, will clear $40 million. Parents may grimace and wished they’d read a review, but whatever. The high end of expectations was around $44, so that’s a win.

“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” shows that brand had less sequel value than Universal thought. Predictions that it might win the weekend, or hit the mid $30s, are down the drain. Thursday night put it on track to do well, Friday tamped down expectations. A $20 million weekend is the baseline, now. Maybe they’ll recover to $25 or so. Maybe.

“Captain America: Civil War,” the first summer movie and first blockbuster of the summer, has added another $33 million, or will have by midnight Sunday. Three weeks at number 1 didn’t quite happen.

“Zootopia” is still in the top ten after 12 weeks, $330 million richer.

But let’s start with “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” the sequel to the Seth Rogen/Rose Byrne fading hipster/stoner parents in revolt against their new frat bro neighbors.

Passable reviews were garnered for the sequel, which sets out to prove college girls can be just as rude, loud, vapid, stoned and over-sexed as college boys. It stumbles along, and reviews range from indifference to “Well, all right. If you have to.” It’ll make money, but the best bits are in the trailer. Whoops. Spoiler alert.

There’s a lovely, stupidly high approval number on Rotten Tomatoes for “The Nice Guys.” It’s a two hour long, hit-or-miss throwback action comedy with Russell Crowe in the Nick Nolte/Danny Glover role and Ryan Gosling as the cooler but goofy Eddie Murphy/Mel Gibson partner part.

Shane Black’s latest is all over the place. Russell Crowe doesn’t have to do anything funny, and doesn’t. There’s a too-smart-for-her-age kid, and an oddball villain and so on. Nothing we didn’t see on a weekly basis in the 80s and early 90s (“Last Boy Scout,” etc.). The metacritic rating is a lot closer to the mark on this one — subdued.

Anybody who endorsed “The Angry Birds Movie” is not to be trusted. Puerile, leaden, with a sinister subtext, I thought. Pans all around for that one. 

“Hard Sell” and “Almost Holy” are among the limited releases I got around to seeing this week. “Sell” is “Risky Business Lite” — cruder than the original, not funny. “Holy” is a disorganized but engrossing documentary about a Ukrainian preacher who saves homeless kids using threats, cajoling and brute force.

Nothing opening this weekend should challenge “Captain America,” right? Wrong.

Box Office Mojo figures “The Angry Birds” will seize the high ground at the box office. Mojo predicts a $43 to $36 margin for the “Birds” over the “Cap.” “Neighbors 2,” Mojo predicts, will be neck and neck for second with the Marvel movie.

Box Office Guru is leaning towards “Captain America: Civil War” holding on to $40 million worth of audience this weekend. Seems a tad generous.

“Birds” could clear $40, and would win the weekend. “Sorority Rising” could clear $35, and that would be good enough for second, I figure. “Civil War” mid$30s, tops.

Nobody is predicting big things for “The Nice Guys.” Thursday’s midnight shows were all about the frat bros and sorority…girls (“Neighbors”).

Ryan Gosling can’t open a blockbuster, and Russell Crowe hasn’t had a co-starring hit since, what, “Master and Commander”? Mid’teens for “Nice Guys,” maybe more if an older audience can be roused into showing up.

Warning signs that you may not have enough money to film a “heist” picture.

If the only place to set the “bank” your gang of actors is knocking over is the low-rent warehouse district. Where there would never be a bank branch.

If you can’t afford blanks for your firearms, and have to super-cheap it by digitally editing in muzzle flashes in post-production.

If the only “name” you can land for the cast is rocker-poet and-oh-by-the-way “actor” Henry Rollins.

“The Last Heist” steps up to the plate with those three strikes, and while Rollins doesn’t let down the side, it pretty much goes downhill from there. It’s an 84 minute walk-don’t-run-through of a thriller, a heist-splatter hybrid directed with no style and no urgency, attitudes the director imposes upon the unfortunate cast.

A gang of seven is stuffed into a white transit van. They’re parked in a neighborhood with no housing, no businesses, only warehouses. There’s a bank, with a “security” gate in front. And as they wait for their moment, they see the scariest pedestrian on Planet Earth in a place with NO pedestrians.

“Civilian,” they mutter. But that’s no civilian. That’s Henry Rollins, in black suit, black trench coat (in LA!), dark sunglasses and…dude, where did you get those SHOES?

He’s a bank customer. The branch is closing, and he has to close out his safety deposit box.

But no sooner has he started emptying that out, in the vault, than the gang bursts in wearing and frightens the two customers in the lobby, and the two bank employees. Only, not that much. Nobody looks frightened. The gang must have a calming effect. They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry, or have any sense of urgency at all about this.

And it’s not just about who they’re robbing.

The inevitable “You know who owns this place?” is answered with “Sure we do, that’s half the fun!”

The gang is a rainbow coalition of actors playing thugs — white, black, young, older, male and badass females (Kristina Klebe, Camilla Jackson). They’re code-named “Echo 1, Echo 2,” etc. But Paul (Torrance Combs), their leader, recognizes the assistant bank manager.

Off comes the mask, and Paul and Danny (Michael Aaron Milligan) bond like the long-lost-brothers they are.

The logic of that coincidence pales if you get hung up on his using their real names and taking his mask off…in front of HOSTAGES.

Thank heavens we’re redirected into the vault, where it turns out the preacher-like bank customer played by Rollins has a secret.

“I just need a moment of your time,” is but his introduction. He’s The Window Killer, a murderer who leaves his victims with their eyes gouged out. Guess where he stores those eyes.

The cops who mosey up to an expected armed robbery (Victoria Pratt is lead saunterer) don’t know that upon arrival.

So you’ve got a gang of bored armed robbers, trapped in a stand-off with bored cops, stuck with unafraid hostages inside a rambling, ventilation-shaft riddled “bank” with a knife-wielding serial killer.

Rollins makes what he can of this nutjob, cutting his victims, telling how long before they bleed to death, begging to know, “What’s it FEEL like?”

The rest of the cast take their queues from director Mike Mendez. It’s a movie that passes slowly, like a kidney stone. Even when he isn’t over-using slow-motion, it feels like we’re watching slo-mo. Mendez makes his living as a film editor. How? This isn’t a movie, it’s a still-life. Nervous energy and suspense can be supplemented in the editing. Not here.

The script is a cut-and-pasting of random thriller cliches and hoary thriller one-liners.

“You’re playing with the Big Boys, detective. This is how we roll!”

Sorry to get that mean, but gallons of blood and quarts of cliches later, we awaken for a finale that we’ve long since despaired of caring about. All this “heist” has stolen is our time.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence and gallons and gallons of blood, and profanity

Cast: Henry Rollins, Torrance Combs, Victoria Pratt,John J. York, Faye DeWitt, Camilla Jackson,  Kristina Klebe
Credits: Directed by Mike Mendez, script by Guy Stevenson. An XLRator release.

Running time: 1:24

The totalitarianism of Tribalism is skewered without anesthetic in the darkly unpleasant satire “The Lobster,” a film about couples and loners and the ways they enforce their norms on others.

Then again, maybe not.

The latest obscure musings by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”) is full of shrewd observations about a world obsessed with everyone EVERYone’s relationship status and applies higher stakes to “We’re a couple” than modern society sanctions.

“The Lobster” is science fiction and social satire, and thanks to blood and bloodless choices, a pretty grim sit-through. Did I mention “unpleasant”? Yes? Just checking.

David, played by Colin Farrell at the pot-bellied onset of middle age, has just been dumped by his wife. That means he must go to this resort hotel in rural Ireland to meet someone new. He just must.

But this is a resort the same way “The Lord of the Flies” was an island vacation. Guests sit at a hundred tables-for-one until they find someone who will allow them to move to tables-for-two. They go to joyless mixers and have passionless sex with the staff as a way of preparing for couplehood.

And they compete with one another in daily dart-gun hunts for “loners,” with each “kill” adding a day to their 45 day stay, thus improving their odds.

Because the consequences of not coupling are dire. You choose an animal you’re content to spend the rest of yours days as upon arrival. Because that’s what they’ll transform you into if you fail. The loners, it is implied, already face this fate. That’s why the forests are populated with flamingos, camels, peacocks, wolves and rabbits. That’s why the world is overrun with cats and dogs.

That’s why David showed up with a lovely sheep dog. It was his brother. “He…didn’t make it.”

David has chosen “Lobster” as his spirit animal. Because “They can live 100 years, they stay fertile the entire time, and they have actual blue blood, just like royalty.”

We don’t have much hope for David. He’s painfully shy, fearful, even when he’s with his new posse, the lisping fellow guest (John C. Reilly) and the limping limp-wristed one (Ben Whishaw).

At least the limper is determined to find somebody, willing to do whatever it takes. David and the lisper seem lost before they begin.

It’s a world where every dismissal, every polite beg-off or rebuffed invitation to dance has life-or-death consequences. The sad “biscuit woman” (Ashley Jenson) lets her desperation and suicidal tendencies show.

The mixer dances, presided over by the singing couple in charge (Olivia Colman, James Finnegan) are like forlorn postcards of a long-faded romantic event. The punishments and humiliations for offenses like masturbation are excruciating, heartless and cruel, just like the hotel’s most “successful” hunter/guest (Angeliki Papoulia).

Which is why David flees and falls in with a gang of loners, led by the ruthless and just-as-cruel Loner Leader (Lea Seydoux).

The loners have their draconian rules, just like the totalitarian couplehood, where police check lone shoppers for their marital status. Loners in the woods cannot mate.

But in the woods with the loners is where David meets somebody just as short-sighted as he (Rachel Weisz, who narrates the story).

That’s one of the running digs of “The Lobster.” In this world, people are conditioned to look for superficial “compatibilities,” like a computer app. Got a limp? Find a woman with a limp. She gets nosebleeds? Better make sure you get them, too.

Every line sounds like something computer-written with all the feeling synthesized out of it.

“We dance alone. That’s why we only play electronic music.”

In spite of everything, David and his fellow short-sighted connect. Going through the motions of pretending to be in love (so that they can “pass” for a couple for excursions into the city) makes them fall in love. And the metaphor — love is short-sighted and can’t see all the way to an unhappy ending — is potent if obvious.

Farrell doesn’t give away much as David. But the Oscar-winning Weisz lets the lonely longing show behind her eyes. In the right role, she can be heartbreaking.

Seydoux is marvelously hateful, a lovely loner bent on breaking up the fascist-imposed couples.

Couples just starting out are assigned children to distract them from their problems with each other if they start fighting. The whole society is built upon misconceptions, traditions, what-must-be, like a theocracy or communist family planning state that imposes couplehood, procreation and “happiness” on one and all.

It’s all too droll and tinged with loveless sadism to go down easily, a “1984” for a loveless, disconnected but Facebook “connected” age.It hurts.

And that makes “The Lobster” more a movie that you appreciate and ponder than one you embrace and enjoy. Whatever its intellectual pretensions, I am looking forward to never seeing it again.

MPAA Rating:R for sexual content including dialogue, and some violence

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Jessica Barden
Credits: Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, script by Efthymis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:58

Girls, parents may argue, are “twice as much trouble as boys.” So a movie about partying sorority sisters would have to offer double the trouble of one about frat bros.

That’s the logic behind “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.” It has to be twice as raunchy, exponentially more transgressive — crossing lines you just don’t see comedies cross — right?

It doesn’t. It’s got just about enough laughs, but there’s so much more that the Script by Committee wants to shoehorn in, like female empowerment, bad parenting passed off as “doing our best” just like our parents, gay marriage and the incredibly sexist college Greek system, a relic of the “Animal House” era that remains as “rapey” as ever.

“Neighbors 2” is a 92 minute comedy that plays like a two hour drag, a real check-your-cell-messages endurance test.

Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) have a toddler who loves playing with Kelly’s vibrator. Somehow, she’s not gotten her hand on Mac’s vast bong collection. Because whatever else these two have done, growing up themselves is not something they’ve mastered since “Neighbors.”

But Kelly’s pregnant again, or as Mac might put it, they’ve got a “little Jew in the oven.” Ahem. They find out when she vomits on him in the middle of intercourse.

They have a big house, but it’s time to get a bigger one. But things are afoot with the big, eight-bedroom monstrosity next door.

Shelby, Beth and Nora (Chloe Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons of “Dope” and Beanie Feldstein) meet each other as college misfits — unpopular girls turned off by the sexual salesmanship and second-class citizenship that sororities pass off as “sisterhood”(Selena Gomez leads the most popular one).

So the stoner Shelby (Moretz) and her pals resolve to start their own sorority, where young women have the same rights as frat bros. In other words, they can throw parties. Because sororities aren’t allowed to do that. Only fraternities. As Selena’s character snaps in the movie, “Google it.”

The “start our own” thing idea was stolen from an Amanda Bynes comedy, “Sydney White.” But never mind. Five credited writers can’t be expected to be original.

The stupid-high rent of the house forces the girls to enlist help. That’s where Teddy (Zac Efron), frat bro stuck in “quarter life crisis” and a Foot Locker job ever since college, comes in. He’ll mentor them. And have his revenge on Mac and Kelly.

He has a criminal record, thanks to them. He will “facilitate the act of partying in the house,” help them round up recruits who will pay the rent. “I just want to feel valued,” he says.

The “old people” are trying to sell their house. They’ve cluelessly nodded their way through the real-estate contract that put their house in escrow. They need the new owners not to see college coed chaos for 30 days. And the girls, just as childish, won’t cooperate. So they call the girls’ parents (Kelsey Grammer) to complain, and “It’s on.”

The “war” has a couple of funny battles — one involving a riot and chase as Mac and Kelly and their friends trying to steal the pot the girls want to sell to cover expenses.

Teddy, trying to find himself after his best-frat-bro (James Franco) gets engaged to another bro, switches sides.

Hilarious single-scene cameos score, with Grammer, Lisa Kudrow (snarky college chancellor) and Hannibal Buress (campus cop) landing laughs. The singing guy-to-guy engagement moment is adorable.

A sorority hazing ritual has the new girls dressed as (Universal’s) Minions, doing all the house chores. Cute.

Efron takes his shirt off, repeatedly, dances a striptease. Use it while it lasts, brother. The same goes for Rogen, whose plump, profane stoner act is wearing thin.

But the many random amusing moments are broken up by the girls’ questioning their values and the parents next door coming to grips with how bad they are at parenting. You just know “teachable moments” are on the way.

Director Nicholas Stoller puts WAY too much effort in “showing both sides,” and the girls aren’t remotely as funny or interesting as the alleged adults.

But maybe this movie will do some good. If “Animal House” brought generations back into the fraternities, “little sisters” of fraternities and sororities of America, maybe “Neighbors” will awaken the parents who write the checks to exactly the sort of warped system and even more warped values system (albeit, sometimes hilariously so) going Greek perpetuates.

Judging from such parents as Mac and Kelly, though, it’ll never happen.

MPAA Rating:R for crude sexual content including brief graphic nudity, language throughout, drug use and teen partying

Cast: Seth Rogen, Chloe Grace Moretz, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Kiersey Clemons, Lisa Kudrow
Credits: Directed by Nicholas Stoller, script by Andrew J. Cohen, Brendan O’Brien, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Nicolas Stoller. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:32

Why, exactly? Dead horse and all.

In “The Nice Guys,” director Shane Black and producer Joel Silver go back to the ’70s to relive their 1980s glory, those guns, giggles and gore action comedies like “Lethal Weapon” and “The Last Boy Scout.”

A hilarious Ryan Gosling and a gruff and grumpy Russell Crowe are the oddball pair in this “48 Hours” riff, two LA detectives — actually, one’s more an “Equalizer” than PI — thrown together in the search for a supposedly dead porn star.

It’s too long, and the mistaken-identity porn star bit makes only so much sense. There’s a “cute kid” for the guys to shoot, kill and cuss around. And the body count is packed with innocent bystanders.

But hey, it’s LA in the ’70s. It’s all in good fun!

Crowe is Jackson Healey, a guy you hire when you want somebody to stop coming-on to your under-age daughter, or to stop somebody from stalking you. That latter request comes from Amelia (Margaret Qualley), a fetching 20something who wants this guy to stop following her.

Gosling is Holland March, an actual private detective. He’s been hired to find Amelia, but Healey doesn’t know that as he’s breaking his arm. Literally.

March is a single dad, and that sassy, worldwise 13 year-old (Angourie Rice) amply illustrates one of Healey’s narrated gripes about the city.

“Kids today, they know too much.”

Her daddy? Not so much. He’s a lousy private eye. He’s clumsy, he cheats his clients and he’s plainly not tough in that LA detective Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe mold. Sunglasses, a license to carry, a love of booze and cigarettes are just not enough.

“I’m done. Put a fork in me. Don’t…put a fork in me.”

Gosling’s impish side is put on display here, as is his gift for physical comedy. Funniest scene? Him, a toilet, a .38 and a cigarette dropped down his pants. He gives that bit a run for its money several other times in the movie’s two hour run.

Crowe, as he proved when he bombed on “Saturday Night Live” a few weeks back, doesn’t have those gifts. He’s a born, gruff straight-man, 50something, barrel-chested, good at playing a cynic whose divorce made him bitter. How bitter?

“Marriage is buying a house for someone you hate.”

As in co-writer/director Black’s best movie, the film noir detective comedy “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang”, “Nice Guys” is peppered with wisecracks and “funny,” bloody deaths, like the nude porn starlet who dies in a gruesome car crash in the film’s opening scene. We see people in adjoining apartments or bystanders at a party go down in a hail of bullets.

Hilarious.

The porn industry of the era is as much a part of the movie as the classic cars (re-used in the background, in scene after scene) and the leisure suits.

But the zingers, which fall off markedly in the latter third when the energy flags and the plot unravels, always pack a punch.

The single-dad finds himself around 13 year-olds, some of whom aren’t his daughter. He can’t help but let a profanity fly.

“Jesus top-popping Christ!”

“You took the Lord’s name in vain!”

“No, I didn’t, Janet. I find it very useful.”

Kim Basinger plays a Fed, the great Keith David plays one more heavy and there’s a hit-man with a certain physical resemblance to a popular TV star of the ’70s.

And there’s Crowe, an Oscar winning outcast still trying to win the audience back, never cracking a grin, occasionally letting us see his softer side (he does more of that in “Fathers and Daughters,” opening in July). He should have studied Nick Nolte’s bearishly over-the-top turn in “48 Hours” more closely, because he needed to play this guy bigger, louder, testier.

But his comic shortcomings don’t ruin the movie. They just put restraints on a comedy , a potential franchise, that could have really taken flight. Because we’re rooting for these “Nice Guys” to finish not last, but first.

MPAA Rating:R for violence, sexuality, nudity, language and brief drug use

Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Kim Basinger, Keith David, Angourie Rice, Margaret Qualley
Credits: Directed by Shane Black, script by Shane Black and Anthony Bagarozzi. A  Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:56

You don’t have to be Ridley Scott or have $100 million to make a Trip to Mars movie.

A couple of minimalist sets, video monitors to bring other settings/characters and a desert you can film in reddish filters and voila — we’ve got our Mission to Mars.

But whatever Paramount’s modest intentions in green-lighting “Approaching the Unknown,” losing the race into theaters to “The Martian” renders it superfluous.

Some good actors make it worth checking out, but it feels like the rough draft for a prequel to the Matt Damon movie. It’s meditative without being deep, brief without feeling taut and tense. The most important thing it shares with “The Martian” is a sense of “We’re going to Mars. It’s time. Might as well get on with it.” Everything it does — survival space science, etc. — “Martian” does better, and with humor.

“Approaching the Unknown” is something of a tour de force for the great British character actor Mark Strong. As Captain William Stanaforth, an American on his way to be the First Man on Mars, he is all interior monologues about his suitability for solitude and the nature of the challenge.

“Nothing lives there. Nothing has ever died there,” he narrates. “But I’m going to bring it to life.”

Stanaforth is a biologist who has concocted a reactor that renders rocks and soil down to hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which it then links up for H2O — water.

NASA (never mentioned by name) has shipped some habitat units and supplies to the Red Planet. And since there’s now  a deep space two-man space station, Stanaforth and his ship, the Zephyr, will stop there to collect more supplies. That way not everything he needs has to be lifted from Earth by the same Heavy Lift rocket that will carry him to Mars.

It’s a “one-way mission,” but he’s not going there to die. He will set up camp, crank up his reactor, make water and grow plants. You know, like Matt Damon in “The Martian.” And others will follow.

The Big Idea here isn’t a new one. The pilot of TV’s “The Twilight Zone” was also spun off the conceit that the solitude facing one-man missions in space might drive an astronaut mad. And when things go wrong for Stanaforth, his Mission Control cap-com (capsule communicator), played by Luke Wilson, harangues  him about that from long distance.

“Keep it together. Stay sane. Stay focused.”

For a biologist, Stanaforth has mad engineering skills. He’s brought an old wooden tool box he no doubt inherited from his grandfather, and his trouble-shooting and tinkering talents are well-established in flashbacks (inventing the reactor) and fixing early issues.

But the one mission component that doesn’t have a backup is him. Even though there’s another astronaut following him a few weeks later (Sanaa Lathan) in another ship.

His supply stop at the space station tips him, and us, that this isn’t going to all go according to plan. The two man crew there is jittery, testy and nothing like the all-business/gung-ho astronauts we met from “The Right Stuff” generation. They’ve gone metaphysical thanks to the loneliness and prolonged pairing up.

That’s the main novelty of Mark Elijah Rosenberg’s debut film. The casual, caustic and curse-filled conversations, blame-slinging and blame shifting and disobeying of orders seen here has been pretty much winnowed out of the astronaut pool from the start by NASA’s rigorous psychological testing in the real world. Lathan has only a couple of (video monitor) scenes, and she shows human defensiveness and sass that we’ve never heard from real astronauts.

The Zephyr’s interior looks like the inside of the Space Shuttle (especially the Shuttle’s cargo bay), and Wilson’s Mission Control video images could have been filmed in a storefront office in any office park. Much of the effects budget was spent on dreamy Hubble Space Telescope-mimicking imagery.

I liked the practicality of the spaceship, and Strong’s performance. But “Approaching the Unknown” feels incomplete. The drama comes from situations that are old hat — “Approaching the Overfamiliar.” The third act is straight-up recycling which any classic sci-fi film fan will recognize. Rosenberg is nobody’s idea of a “Star Child.”

Still, if you want another lesson about why we should be going to Mars and what we’ll encounter and maybe find out about ourselves, “Unknown” will do until we have an actual liftoff.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast:Mark Strong, Luke Wilson, Sanaa Lathan
Credits: Written and directed by Mark Elijah Rosenberg. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:30