Movie Nation

When it comes to comedy, “tone” counts for a lot. So hats off– OK, Keffiyehs off — to director Malik Nejer, screenwriter Abdulaziz Al Muzaini and their cast for going for “goofy” with “Head to Head,” that rarest of rare birds, a Saudi Arabian caper comedy.

They throw in mistaken identity, a corpse that must be disguised so an old patriarch is painted-up and dressed as a woman, a madcap mad bomber, Saudi swearing and Saudi Arabian catfishing and assorted hustles and schemes circling around a long missing “egg.”

As a character nicknamed the King of Diamonds is being released from a Russian prison in the opening, you can guess what kind of “egg” that might be.

I wish I could say it works, that it’s light of foot with a comically subversive streak that speaks to everyday life in a sometimes murderous and always repressive, sexist and dictatorial monarchy. But despite having the makings of a fun farce, “Head to Head” never quite clicks.

But that’s me writing having watched it through the eyes of a Westerner. Maybe the baby-steps in this ongoing search, “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World,” plays as more riotous in Riyadh.

Over the top threats and violence are filmed in comic bug-eyed close-ups, jokey split screens and almost jaunty montages attempt to force laughs into sequences that aren’t that funny.

But there are laughs amongst the tried-and-true darkly comic situations and often cartoonish characters.

This King of Diamonds crime figure (Shaher Al Qurashi) is released from a Russian prison and flies into Riyadh the same day as the patriarch (Saleh Alkhalaqi) of Sheik’s Chauffeur limo service, a company whose scheming, low-life son is putting on the market for an IPO.

The inbound father-figures are mixed-up by the blundering limo service, which has abruptly been put in the hands of a new CEO, the dopey, corrupt (parts stealing) mechanic Fayadh (Abdulaziz Alshehri).

The ex-con’s mob family in lawless Bathaikha wants their leader. The limo firm’s IPO can’t go forward without their now-hostage owner.

There’s nothing for it but for Fayadh and distracted, ready-to-flee-the-country-with-his girlfriend (Ida Alkusay) limo driver Darwish (Adel Radwan) to take their elderly mob boss to the “exchange.” Only he dies before it can happen.

Mortal threats and a hail of bullets don’t solve anything. They’ll have to scheme with an ever-widening selection of screwball local miscreants, including the catsfishing mugger (Ziyad Alamri) and his ginormous, short-tempered bomb-maker/accomplice (Hesham Alhosawi).

Things sort of bog down as this simple tale turns cluttered and over-complicated in the middle acts. And some funny characters and situations aren’t milked for all they’re worth.

I got a kick out of the parts-swapping/Cadillac-customization hustle Fayadh’s accomplice is running, with his help — new parts swapped out for old, “extra” parts stolen and sold.

“This Cadillac doesn’t go in reverse,” in Arabic with subtitles — or dubbed.” You sold REVERSE?”

“Why do you want to go in reverse? The FUTURE is out there, in FRONT of you?”

What they do with this corpse is not Ghusl in the worst way. Pity they don’t get more giggles for their trouble.

A couple of low-comedy slap fights are worth a chuckle. Female impersonation (post mortem) is a plot point, and the lone woman character has agency and pluck. The lawlessness in this or that corner of the Kingdom is ridiculed, as is “global warming.” No, the Saudis don’t want you to believe in it, either.

The giggles don’t add up to much, but you’ve got to walk before you sprint. I’d love to see more attempts like this as Netflix, Malik Nejer and Abdulaziz Al-Muzani try to show us that Saudis like to laugh, too, and that they can make a comedy that transcends religion and desert borders.

In the meantime, let’s just say “Nice try.”

Rating: TV-MA, violence, death, profanity

Cast: Abdulaziz Alshehri, Adel Radwan, Ida Alkusay, Mohammad Alqass, Ziyad Alamri and Hesham Alhosawi.

Credits: Malik Nejer, scripted by Abdulaziz Al-Muzaini. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

Elizabeth Falkner was a jet-setting, TV-friendly chef and “food personality” at work on a documentary project of some sort when the COVID pandemic hit in 2020.

She recognized the calamity unfolding around her, and also admits to being triggered by memories of closing her restauranst and getting out of that work-yourself-to-death business during the financial collapse of 2008.

She and filmmaker Peter Ferriero (“Her Name is Chef”) switched gears and decided to document, in real time, what the pandemic and the various shutdowns were doing to one of America’s largest industries, one in which she’d already seen an “unsustainable” and toxic mix of workloads, tiny profit margins, burnout risks, ever-more-demanding “foodie” customers and a health care system not set up to take care of those who feed us.

“Sorry, We’re Closed,” is a hopeful, brisk and sprawling “cook’s tour” with “self-care” and support for COVID closed eateries and their stressed chefs and staff as its subtext. They’d not only be visiting scores of closed eateries as their chefs “pivoted” to take-out and home delivery. Falkner would be checking in with stressed chefs — many of whom were filling their time with TikTok and Instagram performative cooking, lessons, etc., and many more of whom were drinking and “crying in a fetal position” about their finances, their inability to pay their stressed hired help and their mental and physical health during a global pandemic.

Falkner and her fellow restaurateurs bristle at the mishandling of the pandemic, then-president Donald Trump “actively sabotaging” the pandemic response and the restaurant industury when he tried to give the flu’s origin racist labeling. Chinese and Asian-American chefs and their friend Falkner express outrage and fear at the division and hate-crimes this was sewing.

The Black Lives Matter protests became another challenge, mid-pandemic, trying to protect one’s restaurant from marches that sometimes led to vandalism.

And all of these tests — disruption of the food supply, laying off of labor, forced closures and general unrest, are just “a dress rehearsal for climate change,” warns the sage and chef Alice Waters, godmother of modern American foodie culture.

The broad swath of people Falkner and Ferriero track down give the film a diffuse focus. It might have been better-served by limiting the number of people interviewed and using fewer chefs, servers, “mixologists” and others to illustrate the myriad problems facing an industry that didn’t get an airline-sized bailout, despite dwarfing most other American workforces in size and reach.

The lack of European-style universal healthcare is listed as one of the biggest burdens facing the “tips” side of the workplace. Millions didn’t return to those jobs after the pandemic, and not just those working for fast food giants or unscrupulous business owners who hoarded all their PPP loan for themselves rather than keep workers on the payroll, which was the entire point.

Burnout and substance abuse, already widespread in this all-consuming/endless days-and-nights job (read Anthony Bordain’s “Kitchen Confidential”), got worse.

But Falker, allowing herself to get very emotional about all this at times, gives us an idea that she didn’t just want to document a crisis and its impact on a corner of the culture. Inspired by an essay by Prune owner and chef and New York Times columnist Gabrielle Hamilton, Falkner wanted to provide a voice to those struggling, a place for those personally impacted to vent and sound the alarm and a filmed visit to boost morale.

Judging from the finished film, she met most of those goals.

Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Elizabeth Falkner, Alice Waters, Esdras Ochoa, Perry Cheung, Gabrielle Hamilton, Ann Kim, Gerald Sombright, many others

Credits: Directed by Peter Ferriero, written and narrated by Elizabeth Falkner. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:18

Skip past the odd lapses in logic and boil down the new “version” the of river-rafting-with-a-murderer plot titled “River Wild” to its basics.

It’s a thriller. Does it provide thrills? Does it serve up a surprise or two? Does it make you feel for its victims, root for the hero/heroine?

Yes it does, on all counts.

There’s no Meryl Streep or Kevin Bacon in this tale of terrord that have nothing to do with the rapids they’re running. But Leighton Meester and Adam Brody make decent substitutes in a lean, tight and violent tale of a family reunion rafting trip that goes ever-so-wrong.

Meester plays Dr. Joey Reese, motoring into remote Idaho to take a weekend trip down river with her burly rafting-guide brother, Gray (Taran Killam). A phone call with her fellow-physician and beau James lets us wonder if she’s fleeing the mad-rush of “commitment.”

No worries. They’ll “look for a house when you get back.” Just remember, “If you hear banjos, RUN!”

Cute. But it becomes pretty obvious not-too-far-downstream that not everything that wants you dead here is wet and filled with rocks, rapids and waterfalls, or playing the banjo.

Gray’s old pal and fellow guide Trevor (Brody) is on board the smaller-than-you’d-think inflatable. And he’s trying WAY too hard to strike-up whatever he wants to strike up with the woman he used to call “Jo Bean” back in the day.

Two pretty young Continentals (Olivia Swann and Eve Connolly) are the “paying” customers to Kootenai’s River Raft Tours latest ride down the Kootenai River. Nobody knows what they have in store for them, not even the instigator of their troubles and trials.

Gray, we learn during a campfire pass-the-bottle, is “sober.” Trevor, not everybody knows, is an ex-con. He and Gray have an unusually close relationship, one that will be tested when somebody gets hurt and no, it wasn’t an accident.

Director and co-writer Ben Katai — best-known for the TV series “Chosen,” “StartUp” and “The Expecting” — shows a nice feel for the river and the material and doesn’t get stylistically carried away with a story that demands streamlined speed to come off.

Most every twist in character behavior here is at least defensible — if not the most logical — given the dramatic circumstances.

Meester dresses down and toughens up, save for one scene that makes her almost eye-rollingly vocal. Brody oozes cornered-animal panic, which gives this picture its electric charge and momentum.

The neatest feat pulled off here is how this “River Wild” uses our connection with the heroine to empathize, as she does, with that first victim — someone gravely hurt simply for protecting herself, someone we see pitifully panicked, then drifting into seizure and shock.

It’s heartbreaking. That’s kind of a jaw-dropping thing for a simple, blunt-instrument thriller inspired by an earlier and somewhat similar tale.

No, it’s not a font of originality or endless blast of excitement. But “River Wild” does what its inspiration did and manages to move us as much as the Streep and Bacon Curtis Hanson film of 1994 did, and does it in a much shorter thriller.

Rating: PG-13, violence, bloodshed, profanity

Cast: Leighton Meester, Adam Brody, Olivia Swann, Taran Killam and Eve Connolly.

Credits: Directed by Ben Katai, scripted by Ben Ketai and Mike Le. A Universal production released on Netflix

Running time: 1:31

“Mickey Hardaway” is a well-intentioned, slow-moving indie drama about a sensitive young man’s hard upbringing and the consequences of all the blows he’s taken along life’s way.

It’s your standard-issue “film festival movie” — indie, an unknown cast shot mostly in black-and-white, just polished enough to avoid the “amateurish” tag, but not compelling or exciting enough to draw the viewer in.

Static scenes, stentorian writing and flat performances work against the plot’s good intentions and make the first feature from writer-director Marcellus Cox — expanding on his earlier short film of the same title — kind of a slog.

We see a couple enjoying a glass of wine on the patio after a hard day, when a young Black man (Rashad Hunter) shows up with a gun. We don’t see the trigger pulled.

The story, told in flashback, sees that title character, mildy-embittered/mildly-disturbed comic artist Mickey Hardaway, convinced by his loving girlfriend Grace (Ashley Parchment) to see a local shrink. When we meet that psychotherapist (Stephen Colfield) in his home-office, we recognize him. He was the shooting victim.

Whatever happens in these long chats/treatment sessions in which Mickey recalls his abusive childhood, those who had faith in his talent and the rageaholic father (David Chatham) who didn’t, we know the therapy didn’t work. Mickey got a gun.

The sessions aren’t quite sleep-inducing, but underlit, filled with tired platitudes by the doctor and starchly-written lines stiffly-delivered by an unanimated Mickey.

“Life,” he says, is his “problem. Life is hard. I GET that.”

Each actor seems to be competiting to see who can wholly master monotone first.

The flashbacks are generic, never moreso that when Mickey recalls meeting “the oine Grace and their day at an amusement park dissolves into living color.

Mickey’s scintillating description of their first meeting sets the tone, here.

“It was an interesting encounter.”

Not exactly words that make one swoon.

Mickey standing up to his abusive father, as a teen, has a whiff of Tyler Perry lecturing about it. He’s finally “not afraid” of the old man, and openly wishes he’d abandoned his family.

“That’s a Black stereotype (runaway fathers) I could actually live with.”

Dad rants on about an abortion that should have been and a son who is a “waste of flesh.”

The characters are stock tropes, the situations predictably abrupt and contrived.

A teacher (Dennis L.A. White) wants to help your kid follow his dream to a better life? Let’s punch him out. It’s more dramatic.

A good scene passes by, here and there. But the monotony — of message and line-delivery — is contagious.

The overriding gripe I have with this modest-budgeted pic is that there’s zero urgency to any of this. Leaving out the beating heart of any involving narrative proves fatal here.

Removed from the rarified air of film festivals, where rooting for every “plucky, sensitive, underdog” indie is the rule, always in competition with other “plucky, sensistive, underdog” indies, a “film festival movie” like “Mickey Hardaway” is exposed to the REAL competition — meriting the viewer’s attention over everything else competing for it. That’s a contest this one can’t win.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Rashad Hunter, Stephen Colfield Jr., Ashley Parchment, Gayla Johynson, Alana Aspen, Dennis L.A. White and David Chatham.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Marcellus Cox. An Indie Rights release on Apple TV, Prime Video, Youtube Movies

Running time: 1:45

Veteran character actor Louis Mandylor and a bunch of similarly-seasoned friends took off for Thailand to play at war in “3 Days in Malay,” an almost comically ahistorical, geographically-and-everything else inept version of the epic Guadalcanal Campaign.

A hellish struggle to the death in superheated, bug-infested jungle where a mere tent could be considered a luxury is depicted as a tedious string of leisurely reunion scenes between guys too old to be mere grunts, too facially-groomed to be “GI” “squared away” in accomodations too elaborate and modern to pass for Quonset hut barracks back in the day.

The Army is integrated years before Harry Truman got around to doing that. There are nurses and WACs present in the perilous, under-supplied early weeks of this first Allied offensive against the Japanese. The uniforms often don’t look right, and the same can be said for a lot of the ordnance.

So “suspending disbelief” becomes a bit of a challenge. And I say “almost comically” because I don’t want to encourage any “catch the anachronisms” drinking games among viewers.

Mandylor, a familiar face since “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” directed and stars as John Caputo, an ex-boxer, ex-Marine brought in with reinforcements for the campaign, which began in August of 1942 and raged on for six months. The “3 Days” depicted here take place in October.

There’s a love-hate reunion with a guy from “the old neighborhood” (Cowboy Cerrone), a nurse and a WAC to flirt with, and a bearded “West Point’s finest” Sgt. (?) played by Peter Dobson doing a lot of yelling at superior officers, including a general, demanding that he let him “do what we do” because “This is what we do!”

There are just enough scenes from the Japanese point of view to allow the viewer to ponder the uniforms and enjoy the phonetically-parsed Japanese by Thai extras.

Well, everybody knows “BANZAI!”

All those depicted look scrubbed, dry-cleaned and pressed and generally unhurried and not all that worried about another attempt to overrun the unnamed (Henderson Field) and unseen airstrip the enemy covets.

The combat scenes have some exciting bladework and martial arts action, to go along with digitally-augmented prop machine guns and the like. Strafing by digitally-animated aircraft is included.

But it all looks…wrong.

Hollywood rushed out “Guadalcanal Diary” in the middle of the war, and couldn’t be expected to get the flora, fauna and hellish nature of the struggle to look right. Terrence Malick went to Guadalcanal itself to film James Jone’s account of the campaign for “The Thin Red Line” in ’98.

“3 Days in Malay” is so disconnected from “realism” that I cannot find any reference to anything “Malay” in the Solomon Islands or WWII related, any more than I confirm that there’s any way WACs would have been on an island the Navy was repeatedly cut-off from supplying and reinforcing, especially in the fraught earliest weeks of the battle.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a stab at making a B-movie combat film set on Saipan or Guadalcanal. But the fact that almost that entire generation of survivors has died out is no excuse for being this cavalier and sloppy with historical basics and simple military fundamentals. Hiring an advisor to help you miss the obvious blunders, and tell your 40-to-50something cast members to “shave that elaborate beard/mustache,” would seem a must, not an inulgence.

If you can’t afford a few tents and your cast can’t be bothered to leave the golf club locker room (what the primary set looks like) setting to trek into real damp and leafy jungles, why bother?

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity, drinking, smoking

Cast: Louis Mandylor, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Peter Dobson, Kelly Lynn Reiter, Kelly B. Jones, Randall J. Bacon and Bear Jackson

Credits: Directed by Louis Mandylor, scripted by Brandon Slagle. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:39

A wistful Japanese drama from Kôji Fukada touches on the fragile nature of relationships and the struggle to do right by people.

Something like that.

An Aug. 11 release from our hip friends at Oscilloscope Laboratories, so you know I’m down for it and you should be, too.

Another HUGE Friday ($17 million) means that it’s another Pretty in Pink weekend at the box office.

Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster satire “Barbie” will clear $54 million by Sunday night, and tally a north American total of over $457 million by midnight Sunday, according to Deadline.com.

This is a real “world is her oyster” moment for Gerwig. Let’s hope she makes the most of it. Curious about her “take” on “The Chronicles of Narnia” franchise, but it’s not like we saw anything of the possibilities she found in a Mattel toy project that became “Barbie.” So, judgment withheld.

BUT WAIT…“The Meg 2: The Trench” is doing a robust $30 million+ opening, not bad for a bad movie on a VERY crowded weekend with blockbusters all around it.

That’s enough to edge the third weekend of the three hour epic “Oppenheimer,” but maybe not. It’s also marching towards $28.7 million.

The latest iteration of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” a noisy, edgy and animated version based on a Seth Rogen (co-written) script opened Wed. and has cleared over $40 million over 5 days, $27.9 million over three days. “Mutant Mayhem” indeed.

“Haunted Mansion” will fall just short of $10 million ($9 according to Deadline) on its second weekend, probably landing it in fifth place. It’s over $42, and kind of a bomb.

“Sound of Freedom” is fading, losing over 400 screens this weekend, and exited the top five despite fans buy more tickets for showings nobody is attending. It earned less than $1.5 Friday, trailing “Haunted Mansion,” and will cash in under $8, but is still over $164 million by Sunday, all “found money,” as they say.

As always, I’ll be updating this all weekend as more data from Box Office Pro, Box Office Mojo and Deadline.com become available.

Maybe the most famous apology Mel Gibson ever made — “famous” because he’s not known for apologizing — was for a film he produced and starred in directed by the legendary Wim Wenders, of “Wings of Desire” and “Paris, Texas,” of “Submergence” and such documentaries as “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Pope Francis: A Man of His Word.”

Sayeth Mel, speaking of 2000’s “The Million Dollar Hotel,” “I thought it was as boring as a dog’s ass.” 

It’s a pity he apologized. Because he wasn’t wrong, at least in this instance.

“Hotel” began life as basically a location, a milieu stumbled-into by the Irish rocker Bono when his band, U2, were at their peak and filming the music video to the anthemic “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

As imagined by Wenders and collaborating screenwriter Nicholas Klein, it’s a mad, dull hodgepodge of characters — just a couple of them interesting — in a not-nearly-seedy-enough LA flophouse hotel, vagrants spinning yarns and anecdotes as they’re interviewed and then interrogated by a dogged FBI agent in a neckbrace played by Gibson.

It’s all in service of a murder mystery that for all intents and purposes looks like a rich, depressed junky-kid’s suicide. His daddy (Harris Yulin) is politically connected. So the FBI is here to make a Federal case out of something that happens all the time at The Million Dollar Hotel.

Gibson is the star, but the film focuses on prattling voice-over narrator Tom Tom, so-named because of his tendency to repeat himself. He’s played by Jeremy Davies in a performance as self-conscious as his gelled-into-giant ears hair.

Agent Skinner sizes the kid as up “an idiot” in instant.

“Why would you say I was an idiot?”

“Wild guess.”

Tom Tom was best friends with Izzy, the dead man. Tom Tom is easily distracted. Tom Tom is most distracted by the beautiful, flighty Eloise, played by Milla Jovovich in her last pic before the “Resident Evil” movies set her and her offspring up for life.

Agent Skinner intimidates the desk clerk (Richard Edson), and other residents played by the likes of Amanda Plummer, Gloria Stuart (“Titanic”), Bud Cort and Jimmy Smits.

But Tom Tom he has to wine and dine, because Tom Tom might actually know something, if it can be coaxed out of that fragile, damaged psyche.

The film is about as interested in this “case” as we the viewers are. So instead you focus on the cast and wonder with each, in turn, what it was that attracted them to this disaster-in-the-making.

The U2 connection? The chance to dress down, vamp “almost homeless?” Or was it the same thing that made me stop scrolling by titles and watch it — “directed by Wim Wenders.” That must’ve been what hooked Mel, who is a solid, stern presence at the heart of a lot of actors going all improvisational flakey-flighty-indulgent.

The only thing that promises to stick with me from this otherwise instantly-forgettable fiasco is Peter Stormore’s hilarious turn as a delusional guitarist who thinks he was kicked out of The Beatles and thus sings, strums and speaks just like John Lennon.

I mean JUST like John Lennon. It’s astounding to hear that voice coming out of that “Fargo” killer’s face.

Wenders’ name isn’t sullied by “The Million Dollar Hotel,” even though he’s had a lot of flops in recent decades.

But sheer strangeness is no substitute for the authority of his many documentaries on cinema and filmmakers or the magic of “Wings of Desire,” a film of singular poetry and magic.

Best not to waste the two hours of this one to appreciate the odd Mel, Smits, Plummer, Julian Sands or Stormare moment from it. Literally every other film Wenders made is better than this one — certainly the many I’ve seen, even the dogs, back that up.

Mel’s “dog’s ass” review remains the last word on the subject.

Rating: R for (profanity) and some sexual content

Cast: Mel Gibson, Jeremy Davies, Milla Jovovich, Amanda Plummer, Jimmy Smits, Richard Edson, Gloria Stuart, Julian Sands, Charlayne Woodard, Donal Logue, Ellen Cleghorne, Harris Yulin, Bud Cort and Peter Stormare

Credits: Directed by Wim Wenders, scripted by Nicholas Klein. A Lionsgate release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 2:02

The bar’s pretty high on zombie movies these days. Show us something fresh, maybe with a bit of subtext, and surprise us. Or don’t bother.

“Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead” is a Japanese multi-media franchise riff on a genre Americans invented and expanded on, Brits did well by and Koreans utterly-mastered with those alarming “Last Train to Busan” pictures — both of them.

This cutesie Japanese tale began life as a manga, migrated to TV and is now TWO films — one anime, the other live action, which I’m reviewing here.

The effects are as good as any zombie movie of recent vintage. But it’s not scary on a par with any of the “Living Dead” movies, much less “28 Days Later” or “World War Z.”

There are jokes, but it’s not “Zombieland” or its sequel, not by any means. “Cute” is about all it can manage. On occasion.

Truth be told, the picture this most resembles just opened in theaters — “The Meg 2.” And that’s not a good thing.

But there is a distinctly Japanese political subtext, albeit one that seems a trifle dated now. It’s about a young “salaryman” who is relieved when the zombie apocalypse arrives because of what it means in relation to his indentured-servitude job in a “toxic” workplace.

“Could this mean — maybe, just maybe — that today I don’t need to come in to work?”

That “loyal-to-the-death” commitment to work and your employer seems to have faded in recent generations, along with the desire to start families.

What Akira Tendo (Eiji Akaso) decides to do, after he’s fleeing the staggering legions of walking dead, is everything he EVER wanted to do, but never had time for — a “bucket list.”

“Clean up my room,” (dubbed, or in Japanese with subtitles) for starters. “Set off a fireworks display.” “Have drinks with a stewardess.” “Tell someone I’m in love with them.”

Pretty mundane stuff. But being a good guy, he tries to help his pregnant neighbors first. He makes up with his college (American-style) football teammate Kenichiro (Shuntarô Yanagi), whom he’s held a grudge against for choking in the Big Game. But before they make up, he’s got to rescue the dude from a “love hotel,” a brothel-like operation full of naked, seething female zombies.

And Akira would really like to add the fetching survivalist with the mad martial arts skills (Mai Shiraishi) to their “team.” But Ms. I Travel Alone won’t even give up her name. At first.

As is the way of such narratives, there’s a “quest” to get to “safe harbor.” The hard-to-get martial artist finds herself “Saved” by the “super hero” delusional lads and drawn into Akira’s cracked “Bucket List” — “surf yoga,” “soak in a hot spring,” etc.

But at some point we’ve got to underscore that metaphor, that “salarymen” are zombies in their own way, as Akira’s bullying boss (veteran character actor Kazuki Kitamura, superb) re-enters his life.

The story is simple to the point of simplistic. And once it’s made its big satiric point, it goes off the rails into goofiness that isn’t goofy enough and a desperate struggle to survive one last big challenge that isn’t all that scary or interesting.

One twist to this Japanese zombie movie that differs from the British, Korean, Malaysian and especially the American films in this genre is a reluctance to kill the legions of the walking dead who crave your flesh.

Sometimes, that post-war Japanese pacifism makes it into a movie. Not a yakuza movie, mind you.

Cultural novelty aside, I found “Zom 100” to be pretty tame and tepid going, start to finish. Some decent chases, adorably doable but DULL bucket list items, and cute leads are about all there is to it.

It’s not enough.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Eiji Akaso, Mai Shiraishi, Shuntarô Yanagi, Yui Ichikawa and Kazuki Kitamura

Credits: Directed by Yusuke Ishida scripted by Tatsuro Mishima. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:08

Insights and blunt psychological and sociological truths thumb-wrestle with “twee” all the way through actor Randall Park’s directing debut, “Shortcomings,” an Asian American rom-com that comments on Asian-American rom-coms.

Equal measures witty, bittersweet and trite, it lands laughs and body-blows and prompts the occasional eye-roll, but thanks to a superb cast, it comes off more often than not.

Based on Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel, “Shortcomings” is about a film school grad turned arthouse cinema manager and dyed in the wool film snob, and the women in his life. And if the material feels familiar, it should. There’s a hint of every movie about a movie lover — told from a male point of view — ever made in it.

But there’s little sugar coating this Woody Allen character of Japanese descent. Ben, played by Justin H. Min, is insufferable. When we meet him and longtime love Miko (Ally Maki), he’s staring, slack-jawed, at the vapid wish-fulfillment rom-com that she and everybody at the Asian Film Fest she works for are crying and applauding.

“It’s going to be a MASSIVE hit, and that makes it GREAT!” is Miko’s rationale.

“I felt like I was at a BTS concert,” he harrumphs.

Sure, it’s “glossy,” the fest director apologizes. “But it’s OURS.” Inclusion and “representation” matter. Just not to Ben, who can’t help but judge this “Crazy Rich Asians” riff as unrealistic junk.

I have to say, at that moment I muttered “I feel seen.“

But Ben is like that about everything — argumentative, self-absorbed, lost in routine and obsessed with black and white French films, Eric Rohmer and John Cassavetes. Miko, whose rich dad owns the apartment they’re renting, is neglected, to say the least.

Ben’s gay BFF, Korean-American Alice (Sherry Cola of “Joy Ride”) is the one who “gets” him, and her assessments aren’t pretty. He is blind to the role of “race” in his status as “the outsider.” And he’s practically a stereotype, the Asian guy into the blonde shiksa goddess. His eye wanders every time a leggy Bay Area blonde crosses his field of view.

When performance artist Autumn (Tavi Gevinson) interviews for a job at his Berkeley Art Cinema, we see the storm clouds form. When Miko announces an internship “in New York” that “I told you about,” we hear the thunder.

All we need is for the gay best friend, his “unreliable moral compass” to decamp for New York for Ben to find himself abandoned, lonely and prone to stumble in exactly the ways we expect in such rom-coms.

But Tomine and Park — a very funny actor (“Always Be My Maybe,” “The Interview”) who has a cameo here — trip up expectations and find giggles and laughs as they do.

Ben is sometimes Alice’s “beard,” but her fake “boyfriend” has to change his last name so that her older Korean relatives don’t know he’s Japanese because “World War II” and “colonization” of Korea and such. He says “I often pass” for Korean.

“Yeah, right.”

The ditzy Autumn is a goofy, “creative” cliche, with her tone-deaf punk band, exhibitionist-dancer roommate and big plans for an exhibition of her many Polaroids of the toilet filled with her morning bladder-emptying.

“E-PISS-tomology,” she’ll call it. “URINE insane” he offers, unhelpfully.

Debby Ryan plays another exemplar of Ben’s “type,” only more binary. Somehow, he figures the racial difference will be their biggest challenge.

I like the way the script avoids a full swan dive into sentiment even as that expectation is set up by Ben’s movie-based ideas of a Grand Romantic Gesture.

And “Umbrella Academy” alum Min and the script never soften our hero. He’s a bit of a jerk at times, a lot more of a jerk at others.

Cola, Gevinson and Jacob Batalon (a “Spider-Man” alum who plays a “Marvel” obsessed art cinema employee) are playing “types,” but make them funny and human even in limited screen time.

“Shortcomings” isn’t great. It’s never more twee than when the screenwriter insists on using cutesie “chapter” intertitles — “Structurally Unsound,” “Ongoing Charades.” STOP doing that, kids!

But it’s funny, packing in the inclusion while sending up a guy who rejects that as a cinematic be-all and end-all.

Want to know what a “fencer,” a “rice king” and about the minefield of dating in the gender sensitive “consent granted” era is like in America’s most “woke” city? You need to see Park and Tomine’s clever handiwork to find out.

Rating: R for language throughout, sexual material and brief nudity

Cast: Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Debby Ryan, Sonoya Mizuno, Jacob Batalon, Timothy Simmons, Tavi Gevinson and Randall Park.

Credits: Directed by Randall Park, scripted by Adrian Tomine, based on his graphic novel. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:32