When You Finish Saving the World is about a deluded but mediocre teen who wants to make music for his online followers. It’s also about his mom who helps run a woman’s shelter but can’t connect with her son. The film follows their desires to accomplish something without any particular ability.

This flick reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite. Not because they have similar senses of humor and not because anyone in this flick is as oddly pathetic as Napoleon, but because both films put a spotlight on self-deluded mediocrity. It isn’t about greatness, but about averageness.

The teenager is played by Finn Wolfhard and the flick starts with the nagging noise he calls music. A discordant chatter that made me stop the stream and restart it, sure there was an error in the soundtrack. But, no, this is his idea of music and it offended my ears. Julianne Moore plays his mother as she tries too hard to help someone else’s teen.

These people just move through life without realistic goals or the ability to connect with others on a healthy level. I was actually pretty fascinated to see where they were going, if anywhere at all. And then dissatisfied by an out-of-nowhere pat ending that felt like the screenwriter had to come up with something… anything… to end this flick.

It’s not a celebration of American exceptionalism but about the average person who floats by under the radar. It’s not about characters you’ll like but about characters they only rarely make movies about. It’s not exciting, it’s not particularly funny… it struggles to justify its existence and there’s a very good chance you’ll hate the characters enough to hate the movie as a whole. I was casually interested to see where it was going but ultimately unsatisfied.

Score: 72