Halfway through Miller’s Girl, I yelled “SHUT UP!” at my television.

I wasn’t shouting at a specific person in the film or because I had heard something that I found to be morally offensive.  I was just shouting at the movie in general.  Miller’s Girl is a film about people who talk nonstop, despite not really having anything interesting or new to say.  It’s a film about smart people but it doesn’t so much capture the way that smart people sound as much as it captures a dumb person’s idea of what it’s like to sound smart.  All of the dialogue is so calculated and so overwritten and so mind-thuddingly obvious, I was tempted to mute the film.  But then I’d just be stuck looking at the images and the images weren’t that interesting either.

The Miller of the title is Jonathan Albert Miller (Martin Freeman), a writer who once published a short story collection called — *snicker* — Apostrophes and Ampersands.  (Again, this is the type of title that someone who has never actually read a book would consider to be clever.)  Miller hasn’t written anything since he married wife, Bitchy McBitchface (played by Dagmara Domińczyk).  Actually, her name is Beatrice and she spends most of her time drinking and reminding Mr. Miller that he’s a failure.

Mr. Miller teaches a creative writing class at a high school in Tennessee.  He enjoys sharing a smoke and a cup of coffee with his best friend, Coach Boris Fillmore (Bashir Salahuddin).  Even though Fillmore is a coach, he speaks in the same overwritten and florid dialogue as everyone else in this film because God forbid anyone sound like an individual.  Mr. Miller finds himself becoming obsessed with one of his students, Cairo Sweet (Jenna Ortega).  But Cairo, it turns out, might just be manipulating Mr. Miller so that she can use her experience of being seduced by a teacher for her admissions essay to Yale.  Meanwhile, Cairo’s friend, Winnie (Gideon Adlon, giving the best performance in the film), longs for Cairo.

The script for this film ended up on the 2016 Black List, which is the annual list of the “best unproduced scripts” in Hollywood.  It’s amazing how many truly mediocre films have first gained attention by having their script included in the Black List.  Cedar Rapids, The Beaver, Broken City, The Promotion, Dracula Untold, St. Vincent, The Judge, Money Monster, Boston Strangler, The Mother, and now Miller’s Girl are all Black List films that went into production.  Perhaps the film’s overwritten and overly arch dialogue seemed brilliant on the page but when it’s actually recited out loud, it just sounds like everyone involved is trying too hard to sound like an intellectual.  Eventually, you find yourself longing to hear just one line that might convey some sort of genuine emotion as opposed to empty posturing.  In a moment of unintentional hilarity, Miller masturbates while reading one of Cairo’s stories.  The film makes the mistakes of including Cairo reading the story in voice-over, revealing that Cairo is not only a terrible writer but that Miller will basically jerk off to anything.

Jade Halley Bartlett not only wrote the script but also makes her directorial debut and gives the film a flat visual style to go along with the intellectual emptiness of it all.  This cast is full of talented people but Jenna Ortega, who has been so good in other movies and shows, is miscast as a femme fatale and Dagmara Dominczyk’s attempt at a Tennessee accent will bring to mind cats mating in an alley.  Gideon Adlon is the only member of the cast who makes you believe that her character has a life outside of the requirements of the script.

I really thought there was no way I would see a film worse than Mea Culpa this year but Miller’s Girl has proven me wrong.