About Alex

Runs Fri., Aug. 8–Thurs., Aug. 14 at Sundance CInemas. Rated R. 96 minutes.

Suicide attempt. Six college friends, not yet 30, converge for the weekend at a ramshackle country home. Oldies soundtrack. Generational angst. Can you guess the decade or the movie? The Big Chill comes first to mind, and there’s even a Big Chill joke or two in this stale debut feature from Jesse Zwick, son of thirtysomething co-creator Ed Zwick, who rose to Hollywood prominence from Glory through The Last Samurai. The younger Zwick went to Harvard and Yale, and he’s more the product of cosseted MFA-land, not the brutal TV trenches where a writer is told, If your script’s not good enough, look for another job.

The script for About Alex isn’t good enough, the direction no better. The setup is a C-plus senior thesis of a stage play (motivating incident, confined characters, past sexual intrigue, blocked writer, secret pregnancy, etc.), and none of the typical characters ever comes to life. Aubrey Plaza is a discontented lawyer; Max Mingella is a dorky hedge-fund king; and everyone else likewise registers as a cliche. Why are these people still friends? There’s topical talk of Facebook and Instagram; the resident cynic (canned, insufferably written) is shamed into admitting he watched Friends ; but this circle of friends is held together only by screenwriting contrivance, not conviction.

The writer who’s black never mentions race. The actor who’s clearly gay turns out to be straight. There’s a cute stray dog and even a car crash (bloodless, of course), but Zwick doesn’t deviate from the playwright’s dusty old rulebook. Every conflict must be resolved. Every past hurt must be forgiven. Then everyone drives home, instantly forgetting what the whole fraught weekend was about, as do we. Maybe they’ll read the status updates later. As we won’t.

bmiller@seattleweekly.com