One of the biggest success stories to come out of television recently has been Dan Fogelman’s NBC comedy-drama This Is Us, a series that looks at the life of one American family through multiple generations. Despite clinging too hard on saccharine sentimentality at points, what makes the show work is how it develops each of its characters and the struggles they go through, making them seem believable and authentic.

With such success, it is understandable that Fogelman would want to recreate the formula with a film, which is where Life Itself comes in, telling the story of a group of characters throughout multiple generations, only this time all connected to one single event.

And while the film touts itself as a theatrical This Is Us, that is not the case. If this was a theatrical This Is Us, this would have actually been an enjoyable film. Instead, Life Itself is manipulative, unfunny, mean-spirited, pretentious, and an overall dumpster fire of a film.

While its premise does have good potential, Fogelman’s script is absolutely insufferable. Divided into four chapters, each one focuses on a different character. The first focuses on Will, played by Oscar Isaac, a struggling screenwriter getting over the loss of his wife Abby, played by Olivia Wilde. The second focuses on Will’s daughter Abby, played by Olivia Cooke, a punk rocker. The third jumps all the way to Spain (very sloppily I might add) and focuses on a farmer named Javier, played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta, and his relationship with his boss Mr. Saccione, played by Antonio Banderas, and his wife Isabel, played by Laia Costa. The fourth focuses on Javier’s son Rodrigo, played by Alex Monner.

In just the first chapter, every single problem found throughout the film takes place. In a rare bad performance from the actor, Isaac is forced to play a mopey jerk who is inconsiderate and is largely detestable, both to the world around him and to the audience. This mean-spirited and unlikable nature is found with the rest of the protagonists. Isaac, and all the other actors, are also forced with horrific dialogue that consists of either long, nonsensical monologues about how “life itself is the greatest unreliable narrator of them all” among other confusing philosophies, or unfunny jokes that only further make the characters more unlikable. Such brilliant lines include “I tried jerking off to you, but I couldn’t finish,” “I’m so happy your parents are dead. I always wanted my son to marry a girl with dead parents,” and “I love it when you talk to me in Spanish. I feel just like Kelly Ripa.”

Even worse are the tonal shifts. Not only does the dialogue fail to be either moving or funny, the film doesn’t know what it really wants to be. It certainly tries to have emotional tearjerkers, but not only is the majority of the dialogue either hokey or nonsensical, the actual moments we’re supposed to be sorry for are exceedingly dark and depressing to the point of parody (not only does Olivia Wilde’s parents get hit in a car crash when she was a little girl, her dad manages to get decapitated on top of that…really laying on the tragedy thick. Don’t even get me started on the actual event that connects these characters together). Really feels out of place on what is supposed to be a typical romantic dramedy.

This Is Us occasionally features hokey dialogue and a lot of cheese, but it still manages to combine humor and heart successfully, as well as have each character likable and endearing, whereas Life Itself is unsure if it wants to be dark and melancholy, while almost all of the characters are detestable and insufferable.

In the end, Life Itself is a mean-spirited mess that wastes great talent and feels more like a high school film student’s final project, with all the pretentiousness one would expect. The one benefit to Life Itself however is how fun it is to riff on. While its production values are an improvement compared to the likes of Troll 2, this could very well live on as a cult classic solely through how easy it is to crack jokes at, how bizarre the film’s twists and turns are, and how much unintentional laughter the film occasionally produces. So it has that going for it I guess.