Based on the 2009 young adult novel “Undiscovered Gyrl” and directed by the book’s author, Allison Burnett, Ask Me Anything is the brash-but-not-bold tale of a recent high school graduate deferring college to make poor relationship decisions instead. Starring Britt Robertson (Dan in Real Life, the upcoming Tomorrowland) as Katie Kampenfelt, the film begins with Katie’s deferment of college and her high school guidance counselor’s suggestion that she start a blog in order to better work through what she’s actually searching for. The film has the openness of the blogging format (a la MTV’s show Awkward), but its twist ending and unreliable narrative make for a mixed-up and confusing viewing experience with very little takeaway.

Katie starts her anonymous blog explicitly detailing in as nonchalant a way as possible her thoughts on life as they pertain to her. Immediately we discover she has a boyfriend, Rory (Max Carver), but is more concerned with her ongoing tryst with a community college film professor, Dan (Justin Long), who is about 15 years older than her. Her mother (Molly Hagan) has a moustached boyfriend (Andy Buckley), and demonstrates a lack of interest or insight in her daughter’s life. Her father (Robert Patrick) is a sofa-bound alcoholic, whose death she seems always to be preparing for. She gets a great job at a bookstore with a wise boss to guide her (Martin Sheen) and then has to drop the job almost immediately when mom’s cop boyfriend discovers her boss has a sexual assault history. A new job drops into her lap in the form of Paul Spooner (Christian Slater), who needs a nanny to aid his wife (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) with their newborn.

When Dan moves and shrugs off Katie for his age-appropriate girlfriend, she spirals out of control, breaking up with and then dangling her boyfriend for attention. More predictably, she promptly allows a flirtation and then affair to happen between her and Paul. It’s one bad decision after the next and we might be able to feel some iota of sympathy for Katie if her issues weren’t just so obvious and remorseless. Burnett tries to build a deeper connection, throwing a seemingly random, clinically depressed, old high school acquaintance into Katie’s life to ask her the deep questions she won’t ask herself, including those about sexual abuse as a child. Old home footage of her childhood play out on-screen whenever Katie engages in sex in an overt attempt to express her sex use as a form of escape and to feel significant. It’s not especially affective in off-setting the sense of fantasy in this girl’s world. It’s hard to take her seriously or care about her decisions when every adult in her world is given plenty of opportunity to intervene and then doesn’t.

This especially works against the film’s ending, which I won’t spoil, but will say is very much trying to make a point about perspective, voyeurism, and teenagers in the digital age, but only succeeds in leaving us feeling lied to and taken advantage of. I get the point of it, what Burnett was hoping to achieve, but think there might have been a better way to get there other than dumping a ton of emotion into the last 10 minutes.

With such a promising cast, it very much seems that this film should have been able to go further. But here we have a case of too much reliance on emotional connection to the writing, and whereas the novel’s quirky blog style and adorable typos helped teenagers build a rapport with Katie, the film doesn’t feel like a blog, it feels like a look into the life of a person determined to choose wrong and with no desire to have anyone tell them not to.

Burnett has proven he has writing down, having written several screenplays and multiple best-selling novels, but the bond between reader and character is most definitely not the same as the bond between character and viewer. And this attempt at page-to-screen just doesn’t seem to entirely translate.

Ask Me Anything opens in LA and in VOD on Friday Dec. 19th.

Ten years ago Hollywood graced the world with their Tobey Maguire led rendition of Spider-Man which helped pave the way for a generation of super hero movies to litter our summer line up. Then, Hollywood upped the ante and delivered upon us Spider-Man 2 which was met with critical and financial acclaim. With dollar signs in their eyes and arguably the best source material in the entire Spider-Man universe, Hollywood churned out Spider-Man 3, and came up about two feet short of home plate and was tagged out by a mob of pitchfork wielding critics and fans. Poor Hollywood retreated into its cave of remake henchmen and stewed upon the decision of what to do with the Spider-Man franchise. “We will remake it!” They cried as they threw stacks of $100 bills at each other. “Yes! And we won’t even bother with any of that Nolan-esque gritty reboot nonsense either!” And they made it so. With new directors, writers, and actors, Hollywood was ready to rock-and-roll with their shiny new Spider-Man vehicle in The Amazing Spider-Man!

And rock-and-roll they did not. I can’t imagine a more flat remake than this. It literally treads the same water as the original only more failingly. Andrew Garfield may make an arguably better Peter Parker/Spider-Man with his British-ness and super hair, but everyone forgets that in 2002, Tobey Maguire was being hailed as the true savior of all things spider related.

The Amazing Spider-Man sticks closer to the source material in that they invite Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy to the party and provides a more fleshed out and real super science corporation Oscorp versus the cartoonish one provided in 2002. But the film has the much of the same origin story as the ten year old Spider-Man.

Even if it isn’t exactly the same plot-wise as the original 2002 version, it feels the same. The film still has that sappy ham-fisted moment where everyone agrees to help Spider-Man at a moment of great need. I imagine if a Brooklynite man saw a teenager dressed in a spandex unitard shooting ropes out his wrists and limping around sixty stories overhead, they wouldn’t say, “My good gracious, that man needs our help! Quick! Frank! Help conjure the manpower needed to help this poor unitard wearing teenager in his swinging ways!”

The Amazing Spider-Man also falters with some of the action scenes as well. One particular scene that stands out as especially awkward is one where the villain, a scientist lizard-man, attacks the school Peter Parker attends in an attempt to destroy him quickly. During the whole fight, the musical score accompanying the fight is a wailing and triumphant orchestral movement that is a very strange juxtaposition of the fight scene in which Peter Parker is getting his spider face smashed into everything.

The biologist in me also cringed when the villain grabs a couple of unlabeled beakers of presumably colored water and mixes them together to form a perfectly sized explosion to knock Spider-Man out from his hiding spot. Hollywood still hasn’t grasped the concept that their audience can tell when their being spoon fed fake science. Although, I say this whilst viewing a Spider-Teenager fly around a city fighting crime. But my point is still valid!

Overall, The Amazing Spider-Man languishes in dull territory and left me wanting some grittier content over the already overcooked and cheesy Spider-Man story. It was steering towards campy but narrowly avoids it with some humor, well done special effects and close ups of Emma Stone. It simply lacks any heart. However, Hollywood knows a money maker when they see it and I’m sure there will probably be two more multimillion dollar installments of Spider-Man and we will have two more chances to see random New Yorkers delivering pancake flat lines like, “He needs our help!” Until then, I will be figuring out how to make wall demolishing explosives out of blue and green colored liquids in my nearest science classroom.