Movie Nation

There’s a casual charm and sophistication to “The Photograph” that harks back to an earlier era in film romance.

The locations are striking, the characters upwardly-mobile and cultured. She’s a curator at the Queens Museum, daughter of a photographer-artist, he’s a treasured reporter at a national magazine. They dress the part, live well and debate music, when they’re not getting personal. The love affair gives away its chemistry through eye contact — wide-eyed stares — but the lovers never let us forget this is a meeting of minds.

“I don’t want to say the same thing I’ve said to another woman.”

“I broke up with my last boyfriend when he proposed.”

Writer-director Stella Meghie (“The Weekend”) lets her camera lose itself in the devouring eyes of Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield.  She loses herself in those awkwardly-long close-ups, so much so that never have to wonder why this serene, sexy romance starts to drag. And drag.

But it’s cute, and a decent story and a couple of dreamy performances put it over.

Michael is in Louisiana, interviewing a local waterman (Rob Morgan) about the impact the BP oil spill and hurricanes have had on his work, when he sees the photograph. It was Isaac’s long lost great love.  She was a photographer, and they lost touch “after she took off…or I let her leave.”

Something about the way he pauses and his eyes drift makes Michael shift the focus of the interview. And when he gets back to New York, he digs into this Christina Eames. And that’s how he meets Mae (Rae), the photographer’s daughter.

Flashbacks show us the gentle struggle between young Christina (Chanté Adams) and young Isaac (Y’Lan Noel). He’s settling down, she’s casting her eyes where they need to go if she wants to make it as an artist.

In the present day, Michael shyly only-not-really asks the woman he’s interviewing about her just-died mother out.

Smooth. And unprofessional. But it’s a movie, right?

The two romances are developed in roughly parallel sequences — Christina longing to break out of her bubble, pushed out by her single-mom, Mae and Micheal facing buppy versions of the same predicament, a job that might break this promising thing up before it starts.

The little comedy that’s here stands out because of the dreamy, mooning nature of the romance. Lil Rel Howrey plays Michael’s brother, a middle class married man who pokes his ladies’ man brother in the ribs every chance he gets (and is the only character in the movie to curse). The biggest laugh comes from one of brother Carl’s tween daughters, who spills the beans with just a slack-jawed look when quizzed about Michael by Mae.

Courtney B. Vance plays Mae’s fatherly father, sage advice about her “just a woman, with flaws” mother.

Meghie gives the film a feminine perspective that goes beyond the “let’s not rush things” pace of the picture. Conversations turn intimate in an abrupt flash, brothers and girlfriends from work over-share.

None of that stops the movie cold, but that lack of pacing robs it of urgency and heat.

A tiny quibble — the “talented” art photographer’s photography is flatly-lit, staged filler, with all the photos sampled looking as if they were shot in a day or two.

The silky jazz and R & B soundtrack weaves a spell and builds a mood that sustains

But in the end, it’s up to Rae (“Insecure”), at her most glamorous, and Stanfield (“Knives Out”) at his most romantic to put this over. And as they do, “The Photograph” develops into something rare in the movies this and most Valentine’s Days — a romance that feels romantic.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexuality and brief strong language

Cast: Issa Rae, Lakeith Stanfield, Lil Rel Howrey, Chanté Adams, Courtney B. Vance and Y’lan Noel.

Credits: Written and directed by Stella Meghie. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:46

Delayed and re-designed after early trailers had fans of the video game “Sonic the Hedgehog” up in arms, the end product movie adaptation isn’t remotely as bad as one might fear.

Sure, it’s very very VERY small-child friendly, with a cute fuzzy (digitally animated) hero and fart jokes. And little else.

And maybe it’s churlish to point out — as many are — that casting James Marsden as the human who must aid alien Sonic in his quest is entirely too similar to the role (matching scenes, even) Marsden played opposite a rebellious CGI teen Easter Bunny in 2011’s human-plus-animated-co-star flop, “Hop.”

Lovely Tika Sumpter of the “Ride Along” movies (and “Southside with You”) is “the wife,” and has nothing to play. Nor does legendary character actor Neal McDonough, as the head military man on the scene when the hedgehog knocks out the power to Green Hills, Montana. That’s where Marsden’s Sheriff Tom Wachowski whiles away the hours wondering if his radar gun works.

Until Sonic shows up. Sonic, you remember, is very very fast.

But eventually Jim Carrey makes his entrance as the villain, all mustache and ego and wild-eyes and gadgets and insults, and things turn funnier. Because nobody gives better comic villain value than Carrey.

“I’m the TOP BANANA in a world of hungry little monkeys!”

The origin story starts Bambi-sad, with Sonic chased off his home world, losing his owl caregiver in the process but bequeathed a sack of gold rings.

He can use these to wormhole his way anywhere — across town or across the universe. Remember, this IS based on a video game of Japanese origin.

Sonic, voiced by Ben Schwartz of “Parks & Rec” and the funny stand-up comedy dramedy “Standing Up, Falling Down,” settles into a blue alien hedgehog cave that he fills with cast-off decor from all around, wearing mismatched sneakers that he wears out with his sound-barrier-chasing speed.

Sonic. Get it?

Sheriff Wachowski is longing for a change of scene. He and his veterinarian wife pine for the excitement of San Francisco, leaving Montana, “where the men are men and the sheep don’t mind,” to the sheep.

Sonic spies on the locals and nicknames the sheriff “Donut Lord” for obvious reasons, until that night they cross paths, Sonic gets on the wrong side of a tranquilizer dart and he makes the power go out for miles in every direction.

He can do that.

The Marines (McDonough) are not enough of a response to this. Veteran alien hunter and government-connected scientist and “psychological tire fire” Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Carrey) shows up in the coolest Freightliner this side of “Universal Soldier.”

And the mad chase is on.

Carrey’s pop-eyed villainy takes many forms. He whistles “Ride of the Valkyries” as he tracks the alien. He threatens humans like the sheriff, but begins with insults.

“I was spitting out formulas while you were spitting UP formula!”

He does experiments in his vast tractor trailer while dancing to his jam –– “Where Evil Grows” by The Poppy Family. Yes, Dr. Robotnik, like Carrey himself, must be a Canadian Baby Boomer to summon up that one.

He’s all quips — “Eeny, meany miny MAYHEM,” and puns — “You just sit there and be You…sless!” — and killer drones.

What “Donut Lord and the Blue Blur,” aka hapless small town sheriff and hedgehog, stand a chance?

Schwartz doesn’t bring much other than youthful (ish) bubbliness to the voice-acting, Marsden probably figured out the “Hop” connection AFTER his agent did and Carrey can only do so much.

This isn’t the best film to make one’s feature directing debut with. But Jeff Fowler had an animation research job on “Where the Wild Things Are,” so he’s just happy to be here. It’s doubtful anybody else could have gotten more out of this limp script.

But I dare say hedgehog-sized tykes — say seven-and-under — will be tickled enough by this to make it a late-winter sleeper.

MPAA Rating: PG for action, some violence, rude humor and brief mild language.

Cast: The voice of Ben Schwartz, with James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Neal McDonough and Jim Carrey.

Credits: Directed by Jeff Flower, script by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller, based on the SEGA video game. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:39

Desperation has rarely been as quiet as Mirella Pascual plays it in “Whisky,” an understated character study in loneliness that is one of the most celebrated films to ever come out of Uruguay.

This 2004 jewel is about routine, life going on without living and the sudden introduction of a wild card that may or may not change things forever.

The set-up is sit-com gimmicky. Marta (Pascual), faithful assistant manager of the tiny sock factory Montevideo owned by Señor Jacobo Köller (Andrés Pazos). She is there, waiting for him to open up the place every AM, and stands by the time-clock as the employees leave at night — checking their bags to ensure nobody is swiping socks.

Jacobo inherited this as the family business, and one year ago, his other died. That’s prompted a letter to his long-estranged brother Herman in Brazil.

It’s time for the matzeibe, the unveiling of the tombstone. Maybe brother Herman should finally come home. But when he says he will, Jacobo is in a fix. He hasn’t improved the factory, with its lint-caked wiring and lighting fixtures, in decades. He drives an ancient Peugeot that he has to massage into starting, dresses down and has let the house go.

Herman, married with two daughters, will spend the whole visit showing him up. Could Marta maybe come stay at the house for a few days?

The whole “pretend you’re my wife” thing is left unsaid. That’s how long these two have been in each other’s company. She may go home by herself and go out to the movies alone. But she’s also been tending to his needs — coffee, bookkeeping, maintaining morale in the ranks.

A lot for a 50something woman hollowed out by loneliness to manage. But she knows the man better than he knows himself. All she needs is his mother’s wedding band, a single photo of them together, and it’s game on.

Herman (Jorge Bolani) turns out to be the brother with all the personality. Being around the two of them just highlights Jacobo’s bitter resignation, his anti-social tendencies. There’s a lot of chatter over meals and the like. But Jacobo isn’t in on it.

Even taking his brother to a soccer match is a trial and requires trash-talking fakery Jacobo isn’t really up to. Marta is more conversational (in Spanish, with English subtitles). But even she slips up with the odd, deferential “sir” used in an inappropriate way.

And then Herman talks them into letting him stay a little longer.

There’s a romantic comedy buried under a lifetime of overlooking each other in this situation and in these performances. It’s just that the little dress-up/put-on-make-up-and-pearls makeover changes Marta, but it doesn’t dent Jacobo.

The subtlety in the performances begins with the script, which never ever “tells” us something when it can let the actors “show” it instead.

The pace won’t be to every taste, and the frustration built in here is more deflating than unbearable. Even a trip to Uruguay’s tourist-trap coast can’t shake the gloom, the routine Jacobo won’t break no matter how much Marta comes out of her shell.

I’m not sure how this played in Latin America, but in North America the sense of the difference between “surviving” and “living” is what stands out. And that keeps “Whisky” — the only whimsical thing about it is the title — in the memory, on a pedestal and still held in great esteem decades after its release.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, adult situations, alcohol, smoking

Cast: Andrés Pazos, Mirella Pascual, Jorge Bolani

Credits: Directed by Juan Pablo Rebella, Pablo Stoll, script by Gonzalo Delgado, Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll.

Running time: 1:38

All most screenwriters ever want, the old Hollywood joke goes, is the chance to direct. “All You Ever Wished For” is thus cautionary on multiple levels.

Writer-director Barry Morrow scripted “Rain Man” and the teens-build-a-solar-car-for-teacher Halle Berry comedy “Race the Sun” back in the last millennium. “All You Ever Wished For,” his directing debut, feels even more dated than that.

It’s a corny cannoli of a comedy, a tale of a dying mountainous Italian village where no one marries because the place is under a Gypsy curse.

The locals all speak English with 1940s Hollywood Italian accents and the occasional “Andiamo!” and “BASTA!” thrown in. The town cute and quaint, all livestock rustic with barely a sign of modern civilization — and no cell service.

And the guys who show up to “break the spell” are a rich, spoiled American women’s accessory firm heir and the three old school Mafiosi who have kidnapped him, and then gotten lost.

They all wake up in this gorgeous setting and fall in love with the first living, breathing thing they see. For Aldo (Duccio Camerini), it’s a timeworn farm-woman. For Bambo (Massimo De Lorenzo), it’s a hunky local laborer. For Cetto (Fabrizio Biggio), it’s a dairy cow.

Yup. Udderly ridiculous.

Our hero, bratty Tyler (Darren Criss of “Glee”) has the bad fortune to tumble for the defiant, don’t-need-no-man Rosalia (Mãdãlina Ghenea of “Dom Hemingway”).

“Who ARE you? I LOVE you!”

Rosalia, “like her name, she breathes  fire” he is warned.  Maybe if he can convince his Dad (James Remar) to send HIM the ransom, instead of his hapless kidnappers, he can impress her with cold, hard cash.

“You, Tyler, cannot AFFORD me!”

Mob Boss Don Rossi (Remo Gerone, who played Enzo Ferrari in “Ford v. Ferrari”) won’t mind. Right? Right.

It’s a silly little nothing of a movie, picturesque, with only the supporting players showing us much in the way of screen charisma. And they’re just supposed to be local color. The mayor sleeps in the buff, in his mayoral sash.

The blind priest (Claudio Bigagli)? He’s the one narrating the story. Sort of. Such as it is.

A lot of people went to a lot of trouble to cast, build, travel and shoot this thing, and while the overall tone has a nice whimsy to it, I only laughed twice.

Once when the kidnappers accost Rosalia, looking for a place to spend the night.

“I share my bed with NO man! And never THREE!”

The other laugh you’ll have to find for yourself.

The movie isn’t much, but I’d love to visit the location.

MPAA Rating: unrated, mild violence

Cast: Darren Criss, Mãdãlina Ghenea, Claudio Bigagli, Remo Gerone and James Remar

Credits: Scripted and directed by Barry Morrow. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:27

Anjelica and Bill, Benecio, Tilda and Willem and Owen and Liev and and Frances M. and Elisabeth and Cecile and Lea and Timothee and Saoirse and Adrian and Jeffrey Wright!

And EVERYbody else.

Hot. Damn. July 24.

“Downhill” is a reminder that one isn’t required — by cinematic law — to faithfully remake a Scandinavian darker-than-dark comedy about a marriage buried when a husband flees an avalanche that might have killed his wife and family.

“Force Majeure” was so Nordic, bleak and soul-searching that you could be forgiven for wondering, “Wait, this is a ‘comedy?'” at any point in its two squirm-inducing hours.

When you cast Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell in your remake “Downhill,” and make it half an hour shorter, plainly you’re going for a lighter touch. “Downhill” suffers mightily in direct comparison to the intensity, physical and emotional peril of “Force Majeure.”

But it’s funny. Dark and funny. That it still hits, however lightly and more hopefully, the dark undercurrents of a marriage derailed by selfishness, distracted lack of commitment and the shocking realization that he’s not born to self-sacrifice the way she is — and she now gets that — is almost a bonus.

Pete is a real estate agent glued to his phone even though he’s arranged this stupidly expensive trip for Billie (Louis-Dreyfus) and the kids in the Austrian Alps. It’s not like he’s distracted by work. There’s a younger colleague out living it up with his new girlfriend, traveling in Europe at the same time.

Pete must be envious, even though he’s got the beautiful lawyer-wife and two sons who got their mom’s good looks. Even though they’re in one of the most beautiful winter wonderlands on Earth, ‘”the Ibiza of the Alps,” their bawdy, too-helpful concierge (Miranda Otto, hilarious) tells him.

Pete’s in mourning for his dead father and Billie is being super-understanding. He’s booked them into a not-that-kid-friendly resort, which is worth an eye-roll. He’s dismissive of how dangerous the steep slopes are, at the soft European grading system for them — “their ‘black’ (most difficult) is our ‘blue.'”

She indulges him. That’s what couples do.

But those avalanche cannons that are the opening image of the film are there for a reason. They trigger avalanches in a controlled fashion so that snow buildup doesn’t bury the paying, skiing customers. It’s just that one lunchtime cannonade brings snow all the way down on the Stanton family as they’re dining, apres le ski, al fresco.

All of the other tourists “ooh” and “ahhh.” They’re snapping pictures. “Perfectly normal” Pete shrugs. Until the tidal wave of snow bowls them all over. Well, not Pete. He’s grabbed his phone and ducked out of danger while she had the presence of mind to try and shield their sons (Julian Grey and Ammon Jacob Ford).

One unfortunate departure from “Force Majeure” here is the level of peril. It is lessened. We’re allowed to consider that Billie, shocked and appalled, might be over-reacting.

But Pete knows what he did. And over-reaction or not, she is simply gobsmacked at what she’s witnessed. She doesn’t have to coach the kids into reacting the same way. They saw it, too.

“Dad ran away!”

The vacation then becomes a “Where do we go from here?” experience, Billie reaching for “We need some time” to talk this through, Pete reaching for any distraction — dining with the unfiltered concierge and her — husband? Latest ski resort pick-up?

Dreyfus has a lifetime of sitting on eye-rolling fury just long enough for it to utterly boil-over. Ferrell’s got the nervous, beady-eyed panic thing down pat.

Actors turned writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (“The Way Way Back”) let us revel in the transition these two play out, from herding the kids and optimizing the trip, to grasping at distractions and/or exit strategies.

Watch the way Billie takes hold of the “This idiot is cavalier about our safety” thing when Pete has them on the pad, rushing them off to go heli-skiing. “Hurry,” the copter’s booking agent tells them, the rotors turning. “The weather’s changing.”

“The weather’s changing? WAIT! Changing to WHAT?”

Louis-Dreyfus bores laser-bolts through Ferrell in these later scenes, until the outrage finally can be contained no longer.

Hashing this out in front of Pete’s young work pal (Zach Woods) and his “hashtag” crazed hippy girlfriend (Zoe Chao) is less than ideal. But Rosie GETS it and shares her outrage.

Giving Otto several scenes, with her every loopy Teutonic locution laugh-out-loud funny, pays off. Pairing up sexually-frank Charlotte with PTSD Billie on a ski-lift is worth the price of admission — “Zo, zexually, you have been all ze blocks around?”

You have to judge what’s on screen in front of you in a remake, and “Downhill” is no doubt not the movie “Force Majeure” was. The shorter run time makes for a brisk choppy story that skims over the gradual meltdown and gets straight to it. Nuance is lost.

Some of the “Hollywood” touches are funny, kind of in-character, but jarring.

But there is real pleasure is watching these two interacting, the chaotic banter that both Louis-Dreyfus and Ferrell have mastered, the shorthand they bring to “long-married couple” and shock this “incident” has given them both.

If you want to see “Force Majeure,” rent it and stream it. If you want to see two terrific comic talents circling around it in something lighter and funnier, then “Downhill” it is.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexual material

Cast: Will Ferrell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Miranda Otto, Zoe Chao, Zach Woods

Credits: Directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, script by Jesse Armstrong, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash, based on “Force Majeure” by Ruben Östlund. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:26

“Ford v. Ferrari,” my favorite picture of last year, won two Oscars Sunday night — for editing and sound editing.

It deserved them.

And watching it again Monday night, before it and most of this year’s Oscar contenders lose their cineplex screens this weekend, I was struck by not just the sound, but the entertaining touches that put this on my “I know I will see this one again, many times, over the years” list — the true test of a “best picture” on the personal level.

Tracy Letts was a GD delight as Henry Ford II, best supporting actor-worthy. Bluster and childish bullying, weeping like a nursery schooler after the lap from hell that Carrol Shelby (Matt Damon) put him through.

Damon was in the pocket, sharp as always. Ray McKinnon had the bit part of a lifetime as Phil Remington, the engineer/pit-man/voice of reason in the crew.

And there is stuff going on in Christian Bale’s usual immaculate turn as Ken Miles that you can feel as much as see. Hunched over, a little hitch in his gait (A WWII vet jogging through sunny SoCal? I doubt it.), he wears the “miles” like a veteran driver.

The soundtrack — Nina Simone and Link Wray and Buck Owens and The Byrds and original music by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders — is worth having just for this Elvis band-leader, Rock Hall of Famer James Burton cover of “Polk Salad Annie” that gives the movie it’s jaunty, driving bounce.

“Pandora” is a Korean thriller plainly inspired by Japan’s Fukushima tsumani and nuclear plant meltdown.

It’s nicely-detailed, with decent effects, moderate suspense and a distinctly Korean approach to how this sort of calamity might go down in an Asian country where saving face, keeping “order” and maintaining authority play havoc with the public safety. More than once in “Pandora,” you’re invited to remember Korea’s occasional lapses into authoritarianism, and how much worse this worst-case-scenario would be in a place like North Korea or China.

But what first-time director Jong-Woo Park has in mind here is straight-up disaster movie — by the book, paint by numbers, every character a “type,” every wrinkle in the plot a “trope.”

A grainy “flashback” prologue shows children playing in the shadow of Hanbyul Nuclear Power Plant. “It will make the country rich!” one squeals. “Jobs” for their parents say the others.

But one little girl says (in Korean, with English subtitles), “Wait. My teacher said this was opening some kind of, ah, box.”Might that be “Pandora’s” Box?

In the story proper, we track four different story threads. There’s the family that runs the restaurant in town, with its bossy matriarch (Yeong-ae Kim). Her lazy, beer-swilling son (Nam-gil Kim) is late getting up, late for work again. His girlfriend (Kim Joo-Hyun) barely tolerates his indolence.

But they work in the same place. He’s an overalls-wearing blue collar tech, she’s a tour guide for all the folks who want to visit the 40 year old plant.

The control room inside the plant is “China Syndrome” stuffed with engineers, new staff and old. They josh about the maintenance and upgrades they’ve been able to put off.

Then there’s “The Blue House” as they call it in Korea, where the young president (Myung-Min Kim) gets a report on the shortcomings of the plant just in time to start a movie-long argument with the seasoned, “wait and see” prime minister (Kyeong-yeong Lee).

The “wait and see” thing comes up after the earthquake. That’s what breaks the “earthquake proof” plant’s plumbing and sends people at ground zero — inside and outside of the plant — into panic.

“Does it LOOK like a ‘minor accident’ to you?”

“Should we inform the president?” “He has no time for this!”

Workers heatedly debate managers about going inside the reactor — a fatal task — to save the town. None of this “Chernobyl” noble sacrifice. Engineers panicking is not a pretty sight. But imagine the low workers on the totem pole, freaking out over doors sealing the plant tight, running hither and yon trying to figure out what they’re not being told — how to save themselves.

“I want to die with my family!”

The PM is the villain of the piece, Mr. “The whole nation will panic” so “I’ll take care of this quietly.” The president makes decisions to give those closest to the disaster a chance, but that creates delays that could doom much of the peninsula.

That’s the “message” here — there are no “right answers” when things go wrong and go nuclear.

The earthquake and nuclear meltdown effects are solid, the performances properly fraught.

The grimmest scenes aren’t the hospital radiation triage tents, the police blocking civilians from fleeing the sports stadium they’ve been evacuated to with a radiation cloud approaching or those panicked — misinformed by their government — women, children and men. It’s seeing firefighters fight to douse blazes and dropping in ones and twos as the radiation they haven’t been warned or given a choice about takes them.

There aren’t many surprises or alterations in a genre formula that hasn’t changed since the heyday of Chuck Heston. But “Pandora” dramatically reminds us of the box we tend to forget about until some blunder, cost-cutting measure or Force of Nature reminds us you can’t close it once it opens.

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody injuries, radiation burns, profanity

Cast: Kim Joo-Hyun Nam-gil Kim, Myung-Min Kim, Yeong-ae Kim,

Credits: Written and directed by Jong-woo Park

Running time: 2:16

The 2011 Belgian comedy “Hasta la Vista” earns a chuckle-out-loud remake with “Come as You Are,” a tale of two wheelchair-bound guys and their blind pal road tripping from Colorado to Canada.

They’re disabled and they’re virgins and you guessed it — or read the headline — it’s a “Sex Trip” to a “Sure Thing” in Montreal, a bordello that caters to those with physical impairments.

We’re treated to testy, disabled-savvy wisecracks, little whiffs of drama, a dollop of romance, pathos, slapstick and a “Dirty Sanchez” fueled bar fight. Yeah, that’s a bucket-list of adventure, and we’d expect no less from a road comedy that works.

Scotty (Grant Rosenmeyer of “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) has been quadriplegic since childhood. His talkaholic long-suffering mother (Janeane Garofalo, outstanding) just prattles past his morning erection and endures the occasional profane complaints from her “Bug” as she copes with every humiliating thing he can’t do for himself.

He’s an angry punk with a hair-trigger temper, which he flashes at the new guy, Matt (Hayden Szeto of “The Edge of Seventeen”). Scotty is too quick to teach “Biceps” as he calls him “the pecking order,” and his choice of ride.

“That’s a grandma chair, by the way.”

Mo, played by Ravi Patel (of “Master of None”) is practically the only guy at the rehab clinic who will put up with Scotty’s abuse. Mo’s just blind enough to have no clue who he’s complimenting on the bus for having “lovely hair.” He’s talking to Thor, or his twin brother, BTW.

Scotty raps, the cleverest “Hollywood” improvement on the original film this is based on.

“Half-man, half machine, girl you don’t need to be quick. Come and get you some of this quadriplegic!”

It’s when he gets a business card from a stranger also living the wheelchair life that Scott has to tamp down his inner-and-outer jerk. There’s this brothel, Le Chateau Paradis, in Montreal. It’ll cure what ails him.

But to get there, Scotty’s going to need friends — accomplices. Cozy up to Matt, arm-twist Mo. Beg if you need to.

Hire a nurse-driver with a van, and keep it “totally black ops.” As Mo puts it, “I’m 35 years old and I’ve never been anywhere without my Mom.” They won’t tell their smothering parent caregivers what they’re up to.

Cinematographer turned director Richard Wong (“Yes, We’re Open”) and screenwriter Erik Linthorst (the stoner comedy “High School” was his) take care to let us see the machinations Scotty the Quad must go through to pack and prep and just get out the door without getting caught.

A funny touch? Matt’s tweenage sister (Martha Kuwahara) is enlisted to round up their “supplies” for the quest  — at the um, drugstore.

Casting is what makes all this come off, as Rosenmeyer’s caustic Scotty is balanced with the soulful, timid Mo that Patel gives us and the “good son” rebellion Szeto has to play. Throw in “Precious” Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe as the take-no-crap driver-nurse and it’s game-on.

There’s a lot that can happen between Littleton, Colorado and Montreal, but “Come as You Are” isn’t overstuffed with incidents. Most of the standard-issue road-trip comedy scenes dreamed up here have decent comic payoffs.

Sidibe is alternately brassy and charming, Patel brings hidden sensitivity to Mo, Szeto has a moment or two and Garofalo makes her character’s depth a surprise payoff here.

Building the picture around Rosenmeyer scores with the scripted white-guy-who-types-with-his-teeth rapping scenes. Those raps give vent to the frustrations and inner resources of the disabled, and do it with comic panache.

“I’m sittin’ here stuck in cement, like Christopher Reeve long after Clark Kent!”

Yeah, it’s on-the-nose and plenty of the laughs are low-hanging fruit. But for guys with limited reach, this crew makes those easy laughs come easily, and unlike the film’s title, no pun intended.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity, sexual situations

Cast: Grant Rosenmeyer, Hayden Szeto, Ravi Patel, Gabourey Sidibe, Janeane Garofalo , Jennifer Jelsema and C.S. Lee.

Credits: Directed by Richard Wong, script by Erik Linthorst.  A Samuel L. Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:47

Netflix really only has itself to compete with in the newly-revived teen romantic comedy genre. Theatrical studios gave up on making such films and getting them right a generation ago.

But young fans of Netflix’s bubbly (“The Perfect Date”) or bawdy (anything with Joey King) entries in the field will learn a hard lesson with the sequel to the very best film the streaming service has made for teen romantics.

It’s damn near impossible to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

The adorable and bubbly “To All the Boys I Loved Before” earns a sauntering, meandering and much less fun second chapter with “To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You.” Not only does the title kind of give the whole game away, but it dawdles so much and throws up such contrived obstacles to love that it darkens some of the glow of the original comedy in the process.

Lana Condor still makes a lead so cute you want to pinch her cheeks. Go-to “teen” hunk Noah Centineo (“The Perfect Date,” TV’s “The Fosters”) still has that offhand, jockish charm.

The soundtrack still sparkles with hits ranging from “Then He Kissed Me” to tunes to CYR, Lola Marsh, Anna of the North and Bora York and covers of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “I Want it That Way.”

We pick up the story (there’s a refresher video of the first film) with virginal Lara Jean (Condor) trying to get a grip on her giddiness and wrestle with “this relationship thing.” She’s got her first real boyfriend and he takes her on their first real date — dinner at a fancy eatery, a magic lantern launch afterwards.

Perfect, right?

“I just don’t want us to break each other’s hearts!”

Trouble comes from that first date, from those “other” love letters than lonely Lara Jean sent to all the boys she crushed on throughout her young life in the original “To All the Boys,” from beau Peter’s “reputation” and Lara Jean’s inexperience at all this stuff.

As in, he’s smooth, but he takes her places he’s taken other women. He reads her a poem for Valentine’s Day and she thinks he wrote it just for her. And she gets a reply from a letter to a middle school crush (Jordan Fisher), which “complicates” things like, you know, her feelings.

Lara Jean’s still living too much in her head (endless scripted interior monologues), and uncertain as to how to navigate these complicated feelings. Holland Taylor plays Stormy, the retired flight attendant at the nursing home where Lara Jean volunteers, the older woman who gives this motherless teen romantic advice.

But that nursing home is also where John Ambrose (Fisher), that middle school crush, is volunteering. Sparks fly! Or, um, should. He’s musical, thoughtful, a lot of things Peter is not.

Some scenes color in around the edges of the movie even if they don’t advance the plot — dissecting octopi in biology class, a Korean New Year celebration with Lara Jean’s mother’s family. There’s a middle school time capsule, tree-house confessions, and a possible new romance (Sarayu Blue) for widowed Dad (John Corbett).

But really, this movie plays like the middle picture in a trilogy — a romance in a holding pattern. The arguments are realistic but inserted as mere plot requirements. The spark between the leads fizzles, new sparks don’t replace those and the slight edge the first film had — his mean girl ex (Emilija Baranac), her obnoxious meddling little sister (Anna Cathcart) have lost their sting.

Which isn’t surprising, because in rom-coms, you only get to surprise us once. God help them if Netflix is indeed planning a third film in this story, because they’ve wrung most of the delight out of it.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, teen partying, discussions of sex

Cast: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Jordan Fisher, Anna Cathcart, Madeleine Arthur, Emilija Baranac, John Corbett and Holland Taylor

Credits: Directed by Michael Fimognari, script by Sofia Alvarez and J. Mills Goodloe, based on the Jenny Han novel. A Neflix release.

Running time: 1:42