Movie Nation

Wincott sounds like a lifetime of hard living and bad omens singing it in the movie. Here’s that hepcat Sheb Wooley showing us how it sounded originally.

Westerner weighing in on this Around the World with Netflix thriller from Indonesia. Guys, maybe titling your picture, or letting Netflix retitle it “Ben & Jody” isn’t the most butch move you could have made.

It’s like titling a macho, male-centric North American thriller “Jamie & Todd.” Or, you know, “Roger.”

But if your heroes are an office-bound activist and a barista with just enough toughness to get by, I guess that works.

The third film in a martial arts/knife-fight series called “Filosofi Kopi,” it’s as topical as deforestation, as focused on a “Big Martial Arts” finish as any Thai “Ong Bok” movie.

Sure, it drags a bit in the middle acts, and even shifts point of view for a while, away from the barista Beni and his occasionally-weeping pal, Jody. But the Battle Royale finale is fun.

Beni (Chicco Jerikho) is a coffee grower in the jungle, formerly a famed barista in the big city (Jakarta). He’s come “home” to “The District” to help the locals fight Big Lumber takeover of their lands, to stop the widespread deforestation taking place everywhere unbridled capitalism has its way.

The barricades he and his fellow activists man are assaulted by club-wielding corporate goons. And before the night is out, Beni will be assaulted again, and taken hostage mid-call.

Jody (Rio Dewanto) leaves the comfort of the city for “the jungle,” where “We’re all alone here,” (in Indonesian with English subtitles). He has no sooner taken the advice to “Watch your back” when his nosing around leads to him being “taken” as well.

Next thing he knows, the “city boy” and the country barista have their reunion in a cage with over a dozen older men. Ben & Jody and a bunch of small village elders are now part of the slave workforce that Jakarta Pacific (I made that up) uses for its path-clearing, before coming in to clear cut.

They plot their escape. It involves Beni’s A-rated coffee, and “Their guard is down any time they watch a badminton game.” But getting out, being grievously wounded in the process, only leads them to a village where the archer-women (Hana Malasan, Aghiny Haque) are in charge, and hellbent on freeing their elders.

Veteran heavy and Javanese fight choreographer Yayan Ruhian is our jungle villain, a man who would kill — literally — for a good cuppa Joe. But will our pacifist, ethical protestors and the women determined to fight back “ethically” go that far?

Director and co-writer Angga Dwimas Sasongko, who directed the mini-series that started this franchise, seems impatient to get through the preliminaries and get to the Big Brawl. There are dead patches and much of what puts these two dangerous-if-they-escape-and-tell-the-world characters in slavery seems perfunctory and arbitrary.

Not only can they never be allowed to leave alive, they aren’t stripped of all of their possessions when they arrive. Each finds himself with a neat wristwatch, perhaps a bargaining chip for later?

I sense wirework in some of the action that makes up the Big Finish, an attempted rescue at the lumber camp. Characters isolate and pair-up with a foe, with daggers and fists and machetes the preferred weapons. Pistols and AK-47s are what you use when you’re sure you’ve lost.

The finish isn’t bad. But too much of what “Ben & Jody” go through to get there is seriously decaffeinated, I must say.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence, gun violence, profanity

Cast: Chicco Jerikho, Rio Dewanto, Hana Malasan, Aghniny Haque and Yayan Ruhian.

Credits: Directed by Angga Dwimas Sasongko, scripted by Angga Dwimas Sasongko and M. Nurman Wardi, based on characters created by Dewi Lestari. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

I was chatting with a young blood/employee at the Florida marina where I live, and he started kvetching about his indifference to wearing Coppertone, Banana Boat or my choice in sunblock, Neutragena.

“Young blood,” says I. “Don’t forget the sunscreen.”

Young Blood asked Siri to play it, for I am an old salt, wise in the ways of the sea. And rays.

Yes, a generation or more has come up never hearing this Chicago columnist’s “graduation speech” turned into a 1999 pop hit by the director of “Moulin Rouge” and future director of “Elvis.”

It was fate that made me hear it and need it the first summer I went through on La Florida.

Mary Schmich wrote it. But Baz gave it a cultural moment via this slow jam.

This is the greatest public service our man Baz will ever perform. The damned thing ought to be played on every radio station, especially in the summer months (year round in Florida).

Never heard it? Here it is. Remember it? Share it with a young blood you know.

See “Elvis ” And don’t forget the sunscreen.

Sometimes you wonder if every over-40 white dude in America needs Lil Rel Howery as a confidante, the best friend willing to be the one to tell Your Average White Man “You’re outta your damned mind” when the need arises, the guy who points out the obvious.

“Chuck, this is creepy as f—!”

That last line makes him the surrogate for the audience, snappishly trying to set straight Patton Oswalt’s estranged-dad desperate to maintain contact with his son in “I Love My Dad.” Father Chuck crosses all SORTS of lines to make that happen in this cringe-worthy comedy about a Dad catfishing his own kid.

Let’s ignore the fact that co-worker Jimmy (Howery) is the one who suggested creating a fake social media profile so that Chuck can get around his depressed, once-suicidal son’s “blocking” him. Chuck takes that tip, cyber-stalks a cute, friendly waitress (Claudia Sulewski) he’s met — once — steals her photos and invents an irresistible “friend” request.

It’s what Chuck has to do to maintain the illusion that takes this dark James Morosini laugher into “creepy” as you-know-what territory.

An opening montage of voice mail messages serves up Chuck’s parade of beg-off excuses and lies for not being there for this, that or the other big moment in son Franklin’s (Morosini) life — birthdays, graduations, promised vacations. These have piled up into the biggest grievance imaginable.

However supportive his mom (Amy Landecker) is, 20something Franklin has struggled with a staggering depression. His absentee Dad makes a convenient target, and when Franklin “shares” his decision to cut off contact with him at his suicide survivors support group, there is no pushback.

Chuck, they and we take for granted, is toxic for his son, who recently tried to kill himself. Only Chuck, struggling to get by across the state line in Maine, sees things differently. Well into his 40s, stuck in a cubicle job, his ex hates him and he’s dating a co-worker (Rachel Dratch) who’d rather swap sexts and phone come-ons because when it comes to sex, “You’re not good a it.”

His kid, just now getting over “thoughts of self-harm,” cutting him off? Chuck can’t bear it. That’s how the whole “Becca” thing online gets started. Whatever the ethics of it, Chuck can see a net positive in “her,” bucking up his son — who never learned to drive, has no job or thought of how to get one — giving him confidence and advice under the guise of this beautiful age-appropriate woman.

And if she suggests he not be “so hard” on his dad? That’s a win win.

Of course Franklin is flattered by this attention, and that turns to “smitten.” Cue Jimmy.

“This is INCEST, Chuck.”

Actor turned actor-writer-director Morosini, looking for something edgier than his threesome-goes-wrong outing “Threesomething,” takes things to the next level in passing off “I Love My Dad” as something that “actually happened” in an opening title. That’s neither here nor there.

The clever touch here is having Franklin imagine, in his mind, Becca actually there with him as they’re having these chats, which take a turn from seeing her everywhere (inside the supermarket refrigeration case) to “Can we video chat?,” “Can I call?”, “I’m coming to see you” to “I’m kissing you.”

And Chuck is seeing these “creepy” encounters the way they really are, especially the kissing part.

The best bit? A frantic driving-while-texting (typos included) moment with Sulewski forced to act-out the misspellings and botched grammar to lovesick…and confused, Franklin.

It’s a cut, cringey gimmick, and it’d be nice to say “I Love My Dad” transcends that and finds something interesting to say about fathers and sons and “growing up,” even later in life. It doesn’t.

But Oswalt is properly perplexed, stricken, devious and amusingly careless as this lifelong liar, someone who with a long track record of cheating to take the easy way out. Morosini is convincingly morose. Dratch brings the funny, as always.

Winsome newcomer Sulewski is alternately sweet, the smile that launched a thousand catfishes, and real — a working class 20something who may have a limited horizon, but who has already had to learn how to brush off unwanted attention.

And Lil Rel, perfecting that incredulous glare behind those thick glasses, makes the most of another “Black voice of reason in the hero’s ear” role. I wonder if he’s accepting “friend” requests?

Rating: R for sexual content and language.

Cast: Patton Oswalt, James Morosini, Claudia Sulewski, Rachel Dratch, Amy Landecker and Lil Rel Howery.

Credits: Scripted and directed by James Morosini. A Magnolia (Aug. 5) release.

Running time: 1:36

Remember how cute it was that Chris Pratt’s hero in “Guardians of the Galaxy” totes around a mix tape from his late mother? Planet to planet, stolen ship to shoot-out — all set to tunes like “Hooked on a Feeling” or “I’m Not in Love” or “Cherry Bomb,” “Go All the Way,” etc.” heard on Peter Quill’s Sony Walkman?

Sure, it felt like pandering to a fanboy demo trapped in 1970s classic rock and pop, but it was adorable, right?

That’s what those hacks the Russos were trying to tap into by having a sickly little girl obsess over a tune by Mark Lindsay, formerly of Paul Revere and the Raiders, in “The Gray Man.” After leaving his group, the solo Lindsay had a couple of anthemic hits — big arrangements, soaring melodies, power chords with horns like “Arizona” and the song used in the movie — this one, “Silver Bird.”

It’s not explained, a song that predates the child, the child’s parents and almost predates her uncle, an ex-spook played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Why does she like it? No idea. How obvious is this “Guardians” pilfering? Pretty obvious. Even the fact that the Russos went to Lindsay, whose tunes turned up in Tarantino’s latest and “Licorice Pizza,” seems like something they “lifted” from their betters.

How cheesy is the tune?

Well, maybe little Claire’s uncle was into motorcycles. Maybe he remembered “Silver Bird” was sold as a jingle, almost straight off, to a Japanese motorcycle company trying to make early ’70s inroads into the American market.

“Silver Bird, won’t you fly me a-waaaaay” became “Yama-HAaaaaaa, today is the day.”

Stupid memory, remembering that. Stupid movie, punching in that ear worm. Stupid Youtube. They even have the Yamaha commercial!

What daft Manx nonsense is this?

“Mindhorn” is a loopy British farce about a has-been TV star, his former co-star and girlfriend, his former stuntman and a real-life murder suspect so delusional he insists the actor play that part in his little cat-and-mouse game with the local Isle of Man police.

Julian Barratt has the title role, inhttps://twitter.com/The_Mal_Galleryor that of actor Richard Thorncroft, a few decades and many pounds — the fat kind — removed from his signature role, that of a former secret agent experimented on by the Russians so that his super-powered eye (covered in an eyepatch) can discern “the truth” of any situation.

“It’s TRUTH time!”

Back in the day, “Mindhorn” had the cool porn mustache, the cool “capoeira” martial arts skill, cool tan leather jacket, the boots and the uncoolest Jaguar ever — the bargelike ’70s vintage XJS.

He had a sexy sidekick (Essie Davis) whom the actor playing Mindhorn was carrying on with off camera, a dopey but brave stuntman (Simon Farnaby) and another co-star (Steve Coogan), whose character, Windjammer, has gone on to decades of much-resented success in a spin-off show.

Thorncroft took his shot at Hollywood, and the fact that he’s got a ratty wig, a pint-gut and a dumpy flat in Walthamstow — a less fashionable corner of London — tells you Hollywood didn’t buy in. Thorncroft is reduced to begging his agent for news on his “autobiography,” which no one wants, and crashing auditions for a film directed by his old mate Kenneth Branagh.

Not sure he’s the best choice to play a Jamaican mobster, mon.

“Three years at RADA’ll give a man SOME skills!”

Fate intervenes in Richard’s plunge to the bottom. A madman (Paul Tovey) on the Isle of Man, where “Mindhorn” was filmed, is wanted for murder and hiding out in the island’s old smuggler’s tunnels (a real thing). And the only copper he’ll talk to is “Mindhorn.”

Not the actor, but the guy in full kit, full’stache and ugly-ass jacket and Jaguar. The nut calls himself “Kestrel,” and he won’t show himself until his idol is on the case. With his agent smelling “publicity” and Richard sensing his chance to be “back on the map,” it’s off to the isle to mix with the Manxes, as the locals are called.

Maybe he can catch up with that old flame/co-star, now a reporter for MANX TV. Maybe the locals have forgotten the Trumpish label he gave the place, way back when. Maybe not.

He’ll mix with the cops, including Det. Sgt. Baines (She Who Must Be Worshipped, Andrea Riseborough), don the wig and jacket and bully-boy our nutjob suspect into surrendering.

“Comeback,” here we come.

What former “Mighty Boosh” co-stars Barratt and Farnaby (co-writers) were shooting for in this goof of a film — which never played in the U.S –was a sort of Steve Coogan/Alan Partridge styled with-fame/without celebrity death spiral.

As reliably funny as these two are, they not only landed Riseborough and “Chariots of Fire” alumnus Nicholas Farrell and Coogan as co-stars. The Oscar-winning Branagh shows up, and Simon Callow also appears as himself, another client of Richard’s agent, who is played by another big name in Brit stage and screen circles, three time Emmy nominee Harriet Walter of “The Last Duel,” “Sense and Sensibility” and TV’s “Succession” and “Ted Lasso.”

“I believe we’re making another transition, Richard, from unemployed actor to unemployable actor.”

Barratt is all bluster and bloat and letting it all hang out, and he’s a damned stitch in this part. Farnaby, Richard McCabe (as Thorncroft’s hard-times ex-publicist) and dopey Tovey as the dopey Kestrel all score.

The story unfolds in some screwy and unconventional ways. The complications are often amusing, sometimes hilarious and always messy and personal and on Richard’s part, delusional. And the island he once calls a “s—hole” is shown off — on screen — to glorious effect.

What they managed here is no mean feat, the second funniest comedy ever filmed on the Isle of Man. And there’s no dishonor at all in finishing behind “Waking Ned Devine,” is there?

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual situations, innuendo, profanity

Cast: Julian Barratt, Essie Davis, Andrea Riseborough, Simon Farnaby, Richard McCabe, Paul Tovey, Nicholas Farrell, Simon Callow, Steve Coogan and Kenneth Branagh

Credits: Directed by Sean Foley, scripted Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby. A now on Netflix.

Running time: 1:29

There are classic films, and among them are quintessential classics, the “life list” movies that every film fan has to know to be cineliterate.

Among the latter, I’d list “Lawrence of Arabia,” “La Strada,” “The 400 Blows,” “The French Connection” and “Zorba the Greek,” just for starters.

The fact that three of those star Anthony Quinn suggests the unique quality he brought to almost every performance, from “Viva Zapata” to that late-life/peak Keanu period piece “A Walk in the Clouds.” You watch that mostly-forgotten film and there are moments when Old Man Quinn’s larger than life reputation, presence and playfulness makes Keanu Reeves crack up in what can only have been surprised delight.

We see that look cross Alan Bates‘ face, almost out of character, in Quinn’s greatest leading man turn as “Zorba the Greek.” Bates, playing a young Brit who has inherited property on the island of Crete, maintains his English reserve, skepticism and general impatience for this working class hustler with his own ideas about work, love, food, wine and telling time. But every now and then, Bates the actor lets a little “Damn, what’s that rascal up to now?” delight peek through his Keep Calm and Don’t Trust the Greek reserve.

“I don’t want any trouble!”

 “Life is trouble! Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and ‘look’ for trouble!”

Quinn’s Zorba is a titanic performance, the very definition of Larger than Life. What critics at the time sometimes wrote off as “hammy” and “over-the-top” Quinn turned into a brand, cinematic shorthand for Big Characters full of the zest of life. If his turn as Auda Abu Tayi bowled you over in “Lawrence of Arabia” — and it should — Zorba was his zenith.

“Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.”

Quinn cooked up a slow, showy jig that became a national folk dance of Greece. The movie collected three Oscars and had a good shot at several others. The character, already iconic thanks to the 1946 Nikos Kazatzakis novel, became a U.N. Heritage site thanks to the film.

If you haven’t seen it, you must.

Bates is Basil, a young writer who meets this grinning, gregarious bear of a man while waiting for a rainy passage from the mainland to Crete, where Basil hopes to hole up and write, and maybe re-start an old lignite (crumbly, brown coal) mine on his father’s property.

“Lignite?” Zorba exclaims. Whatever other line of BS he was serving to his new friend, here’s his surest footing. Zorba’s been a soldier, a lover and many other things. Among them? A miner. He will help his new “Boss,” as he labels him. No no, there’ll be no arguing about it. A deal is struck.

Once in this village on this backward, sleepy pre-war island, Zorba will translate, bargain and engineer the mine back to life. He will translate, bargain and half-engineer the boss’s romance with a lonely young widow (Irene Papas), shunned and harassed by the locals.

“God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not forgive! If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go. I know because a very wise old Turk told me.”

Zorba will woo a lonely older widow (Oscar winner Lila Kedrova) himself.

 “If a woman sleeps alone, it puts a shame on all men.”

And he’ll translate, bargain and engineer Basil into a new way of living life.

“Do you dance, boss? Dance?”

We remember the iconic music by Mikis Theodorakis, a tune that turned into a Greek cliche. We can’t forget the dance. We quote the faux profundities that remind us of what “a man’s world” used to be, toxic as it was. We fall into the Oscar-winning black and white cinematography of Walter Lassally. Maybe we don’t give a lot of thought to the direction of Michael Cacoyannis, who had a mostly-indifferent career aside from this classic.

But rewatching the film anew, I found myself lost in the stunning, Oscar-winning production design of Vasilis Fotopoulos. His work takes us to a Greece and a Crete long gone, poor and primitive and run down, and yet “unspoiled” by the tourism this movie and later EU membership, investment and lately crisis migration generated.

It’s a stark world of stunted trees, rocky ground and rain, a sleepy village with all the universal foibles, failings and human miseries and joys and possibilities on display. And even though there’s a writer present, his “Boss,” only Alexis Zorba truly sees it.

The best way to come to “Zorba” is the way I did, through a friend, somebody who viewed The Greek as a role model, a guide to the Well Lived Life, rich or poor, somebody who truly “sees it.”

So I’m telling you, as your friend, you need to track this down. It used to be hard to come by — a film society showing here, an old movies TV channel screening there. That’s not the case any more.

If you haven’t seen “Zorba the Greek,” you’ll never be more than a film “buff.” Cacoyannis, Kazantzakis, Fotopoulos and Anthony Quinn put on a graduate school seminar in “cinephile, how to become one” with this, one of the greatest films ever made.

Rating: unrated, violence, adult themes

Cast: Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates, Irene Papas, Lila Kedrova

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Cacoyannis, based on a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. A Twentieth Century Fox release on Movies!, Netflix, Amazon, other streamers

Running time: 2:22

If “The Gray Man” does nothing else, Netflix’s latest blank-check action thriller is going rock the worlds of legions of Marvelettes, those fanatics who have been whining about the latest “Doctor Strange” and “Thor” on Twitter because, as one wag put it, the acclaimed directors behind them “didn’t make me cry” and “didn’t have the depth of story” of — you know — the Russo Brothers’ many Marvel outings.

W.T.F?

Imagine staring, slack-jawed as the “Gray” credits roll, and realizing for the first time, “Wait, the Russos suck?”

Yes, some have been blinded by the Spandex, by all those comic book heroes playing together like Superfriends, by famous actors who all “stick the superhero landing.” Take those bomb-proof trappings away and the Russos can still stage an over-the-top action beat — a decent fight, a pretty-good digitally-augmented chase adhering to the laws of Bugs Bunny Physics.

But man, “The Gray Man” is one seriously stupid movie. It’s so hackneyed it’s like the Russos are trying to parody hackneyed, blowing their own punchlines as they do.

Still, they got Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Evans’ “Knives Out” co-star Ana de Armas, Billy Bob and Alfre and a pretty good Indian action star, Dhanush (“Karan”) for it, so it can’t be all bad.

I mean, staging a couple of slaughter scenes to the 50 year old pop hit “Silver Bird” is a reminder than only James Gunn should have access to the action cinema cheese tray. And the globe-trotting “plot” is so embarrassing that “novelist” Mark Greaney should take his Netflix millions and flee the country.

Aside from that, though…

Gosling plays an imprisoned murderer recruited to be a “Gray Man,” a CIA assassin, because he’s already killed somebody. What’s a few dozen more to him?

He is “Six,” as in “Watch your six,” or because “Double-O-seven was taken.”

Billy Bob Thornton plays his recruiter, the guy who’s retired years later when our “Gray Man” is ordered to pull the trigger, and doesn’t. “Collateral” damage has entered the room.

“You’re closed for collateral. GO LOUD. Stay the plan!”

That’s the tone of half of the dialogue, “wet work” jargon, “COS” (Chief of CIA Station) acronyms and the like. The other half? Strained jokes, some of which land.

“You know what makes me sad?” “Your small hands?”

Billy Bob speaks for us all when he passes judgement on the film’s tough-guy-banter-generator.

“I get it. You’re glib.”

The MacGuffin here is a SIM card with incriminating evidence of misdeeds and treason, which the target of a hit gives to Six and Six won’t hand over to his sketchy supervisor (“Bridgerton’s” Regé-Jean Page). That’s when the CIA calls in an independent contractor.

Lloyd Hansen (Evans) is the sort of guy who does his torturing in Monaco, who quotes Arthur Schopenhauer mid-torture because the famed German pessimist “saw the value of suffering.”

“Hand the jumper cables to somebody else,” he’s ordered. “Get ‘it’ back. Make ‘him’ gone.”

Lloyd hunts Six. Lloyd kidnaps Six’s recruiter (Thornton) and the old recruiter’s infirm niece (Julia Butters), the one who loves “Silver Bird.” Six’s colleague Miranda (de Armas) shows up, every now and then, to save his bacon.

Asia to Eastern Europe, Bangkok and Baku to Prague, Vienna and scenic Croatia, the hunt is on, with hunters hunting a hunter and the hunted having his own ideas about that.

The fights? There’s the opening act to-the-death wrestle in the middle of a New Year’s Eve fireworks rocket-launching pad, a mid-air melee on a military cargo jet, a throw-down on a Viennese tram and an oddly perfunctory punch-out with a Tamil assassin (Dhanush) that ends because the plot needs it to end and heck, they want this Netflix movie to play in India.

Six MacGuyver’s his way out of one trap, but a lot of his escapes and “How’d he get theres?” are skipped over just to plunge into the next action beat.

There’s one decent chase, the one that puts him on that tram, and one graceful moment, provided by Alfre Woodard which the Russos are hackneyed enough to try and repeat later.

Some of the third act mayhem does get the old pulse racing, and Gosling and Evans are perfectly capable of handling what is intended as a cool catch-phrase or punchline.

“You must be Lloyd.”

“What gave me away?”

“The white pants. The trash ‘stache.'”

Whenever Six is in need of a change of disguise, those strangers willing or unwilling to part with their threads hear the same line.

“You must be a…42 Regular?”

There are enough fun bits here to stream “The Gray Man,” maybe as background noise, only worth your attention now and again. And there are so very many soulless, head-slapping moments that one can’t help but think, “It must be time to pause (or cancel) Netflix again.”

Rating: PG-13, endless violence

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans, Billy Bob Thornton, Alfre Woodard, Regé-Jean Page, Jessica Henwick and Dhanush.

Credits: Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, scripted by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, based on a novel by Mark Greaney. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:09

Variety must be worried worried about inflation. They’re publishing sketches of what actors are commanding for acting in movies, what Netflix is paying Hemsworth and Millie Bobby Brown, what Paramount spends to keep Tom Cruise happy.

$20 million for Joaquin Phoenix to make “Joker 2?” There’s no movie without him. Pay the man.

Yeah, Netflix is spending money like drunken sailors, seeing the wealth. And? They’re figuring out how that pays off. Or doesn’t.

At least it’s not the hypocrites at Forbes scratching their heads and wringing their gnarled hands over why some worker bees are creating value and insisting on being compensated for it.

Here’s the Variety piece.

Perhaps the writer-director of a film about a teacher having an affair with an unstable student (“Blame”) wasn’t the right choice for turning out a light-with-thoughtful-moments Zoey Deutch comedy about Internet fame-whoring and its consequences.

“Not Okay” wants to be kind of a goof on the subject. Deutch seems to want to make it one.

But former child actress turned writer-director Quinn Shephard doesn’t appear to be on the same page with this heavy-handed mope. Perhaps she changed her mind about her script at some point, but for some reason “Not Okay,” sunny and silly with consequences to come and guilt growing out of that, simply curdles in the third act, and doesn’t so much end as announce a verdict.

The often-effervescent Deutch, most recently seen in the gangland period piece “The Outfit,” but best known for lighter fare like “Set it Up,” “Buffaloed” and “The Disaster Artist,” plays Danni Sanders, a New Yorker with a photo editing job at the online mag “Depravity.”

Danni narrates about how she badly she wants “to be noticed, to be seen.” But her attempts at writing for the mag are narcissistic “Zillenial” takes on “missing 9/11,” being stuck in “J-train Bushwick” and the like. No, Danni, “tone deaf” can’t “be a brand,” even if it is “what Lena Dunham does.”

Shunned by everyone at the office, invisible to the popular stoner/vaper influencer Colin (Dylan O’Brien) she inexplicably crushes on, and too self-absorbed to remember her office-mate Kelvin’s (Karan Soni) name, Danni craves a place at the table with the cool kids, to be invited to “gay bowling,” to be “important.”

Colin’s kind offer of a few hits off his new 7-ended blunt, or if you prefer, “joint,” gets Danni buzzed enough that her online envy of influencers and colleagues going off to exotic places turns into “I could fake that.” A few poses in a beret, a lot of help from Photoshop or its equivalent, an invented (with website) “writer’s retreat” in Paris and an abrupt vacation demand from work, and she’s off.

Danni is living the same “best life” as the most seasoned online humbraggers, taking in the sights, looking cute in her travel togs, all from the comfort of…Bushwick.

Damned if she doesn’t wake up the next AM to a flood of concerned posts and messages — from friends, new “followers” and her parents. Paris has experienced a string of citywide terror attacks. And checking in as “safe” isn’t going to cover her fake Paris trip tracks.

“Not Okay” is at its sunniest with Danni inventing the trip, and then scrambling to cover it — taking luggage and her beret to the airport so her Mom (Embeth Davidtz) can be relieved to have her home, and her Dad (Brennan Brown) can break down in tears as he embraces her.

That’s the photo, taken by a newspaper journalist, that starts Danni down the path to fame. From there, seeing as how little anyone questions her authenticity or the veracity of her experience, she starts writing about “what I saw” and becomes a media sensation, “blowing up Instagram, speaking of bombings.”

But if she wants to write convincing accounts of trauma and PTSD, she’ll need to do her research. That’s how she finds herself in a survivor’s self-help group. It’s not the 40something guy who was at the Manchester Ariana Grande concert-bombing she latches onto. It’s the young school shooting survivor Rowan (Mia Isaac, terrific), a kid who became an activist and got Internet famous for it, who takes her in.

It’s probably no coincidence that “Not Okay,” which takes its title from an expression Danni steals from Rowan, loses its way when the hoaxer starts appropriating experience and behavior from the shooting survivor. That’s not okay.

We watch as Rowan kind of flinches and then smiles and agrees to every little suggestion Danni makes that allows her to cadge a little bit more of her fame, experience and audience. It’s cruel and callous, and Deutch can’t make what the script does with this plot twist funny.

Danni’s guilt is personified in her seeing the “person of interest” in Paris bombings, an unknown man in a face-hiding hoodie, in her nightmares, in public spaces and any time she does something that wrongs poor Rowan.

As the picture takes its turn towards Danni getting everything she wanted and slowly start to second guess her goals and eventually her unethical methods, “Not Okay” gropes around for a resolution that will challenge, inform and maybe entertain. And it fails.

Shephard has picked a topic for her film that stays case-specific when she wants and needs it to expand into a larger statement. Yes, there’s appropriation, yes the web “turns victims into villains” at the drop of a hat, and yes, every Jussie Smollett who claims victimhood for some wrong that never happened erodes confidence in what the hive mind can accept as fact.

Is that a raging societal problem, or is Shephard getting on us for our rush to lionize, or condemn?

Danni as a creation is little more than a cliche of a stereotype, as is the one woman in the office to instinctively mistrust her. That’s always the gay in the screenplay, isn’t it?

When our anti-heroine skips past the truly righteous folks who have responded to her “I’m not okay” column with their own struggles to ask “Did you see Kendall Jenner’s post? I had no IDEA she’d experienced so much discrimination,” it’s not much of a laugh. But that’s your movie, right there, and the lesson to be taught.

The generation grasping for fame on the Internet learns compassion and finally figures out the difference between authentic people and real suffering, and everybody who just strikes that pose for “woke points,” likes and followers. That’s make an OK comedy, or even a dramedy, and almost certainly a better film than this.

Rating:  R for language throughout, drug use and some sexual content

Cast: Zoey Deutch, Mia Isaac, Dylan O’Brien, Embeth Davidtz, Nadia Alexander and Karan Soni.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Quinn Shephard. A Searchlight release on Hulu.

Running time: 1:40