Producers: Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen and Tyler Campellone   Director: Kristoffer Borgli   Screenplay: Kristoffer Borgli    Cast: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Hailey Gates, Sydney Lemmon, Zoë Winters, Anna Baryshnikov, Michael Abbott, Jr., Hanna Gross, Jordyn Curet, Daymon Gupton, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Sam Zimmam, Jeremy Levick and Austin Fabre   Distributor: A24

Grade: C

Pre-wedding jitters are common, but the supposed joke in Kristoffer Borgli’s black comedy “The Drama” is that they pretty much ruin, if not the ceremony, at least the reception.  As the writer-director laboriously makes clear, however, the cause goes back to the days, indeed the years, before the ultimate disaster.

For a while the film seems just an exaggerated send-up of typical rom-com convention.  As Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson), a museum director in Cambridge, is preparing his vows alongside his best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie), we learn about the “meet cute” that began his relationship with Emma Harwood (Zendaya), a bookstore clerk. 

It happened at a Boston coffee shop, where awkward Charlie tried to force a conversation by pretending to have read the novel she’s crouched over.  The entire episode is more bizarre than funny, and certainly not charming, but it does succeed in establishing an offbeat tone that becomes stronger as the narrative progresses in a fractured fashion, with plenty of flashbacks, fidgety camerawork from cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan and ragged cuts by editors Joshua Raymond Lee and Borgli, all to the accompaniment of a spare, toot-dominated score by Daniel Pemberton.

We watch as the couple engage in heavy sex and go through preparations for the wedding, practicing their first dance with a stern choreographer (Celia Rowlson-Hall), visiting with the florist (Sam Zimmam).  There’s one casualty, though: Pauline (Sydney Lemmon), the DJ whom Emma swears she saw sorting heroin one night.  Her dismissal is acrimonious, and her replacement (Jeremy Levick) will create a shock at a critical moment of the reception as Emma’s father (Daymon Gupton) is in the middle of his toast.

But the overall atmosphere, while visually attractive in Zosia Mackenzie’s handsome production design and Katina Danabassis’ costumes, has been poisoned by something disturbing.  During a wine-fueled dinner at the caterer’s, Mike’s girlfriend Rachel (Alana Haim), who’s to be the maid of honor, suggests that each of them confess the worst thing they’ve ever done.  Mike admits to a grossly unchivalrous act and Charlie to cyberbullying.  Rachel confesses to having locked a boy in the closet of an abandoned RV and leaving him for searchers to find.

But Emma’s revelation regarding an act of violence she’d planned as a teen but never carried out floors the other three.  Rachel is particularly incensed, but though he doesn’t want to admit it, Charlie is thrown for a loop.  He suffers what can only be described as an emotional breakdown so severe that it leads to a sexual encounter with his colleague Misha (Hailey Benton Gates), which will come back to haunt him when her boyfriend (Michael Abbott, Jr.) finds out.

That happens at the reception, which becomes the epicenter of the fallout from Emma’s admission.  Rachel has some justification for her attitude in what once happened to her cousin Sam (Anna Baryshnikov)—though an uncomfortable encounter Charlie has with Sam raises questions about the women’s closeness—but her snideness is so extreme (especially in Haim’s eye-rolling performance) that it makes one wonder how cavalierly everyone has dealt with her own confession of actual childhood cruelty, for which she has casually forgiven herself.

After all, the periodic flashbacks showing young Demma (Jordyn Curet) preparing her plan (an episode laced with humor centered on the hiccups of computer programming), but then abandoning, prove that, unlike Rachel (and perhaps Charlie), she physically harmed no one. (It must be said, though, that the plot twist Borgli has devised around her school days in Louisiana—particularly the intervention of a shrewd classmate played by Austin Fabre—is never fully convincing, and that the heavy irony built into it has unpleasant implications).

But then neither is the larger plot built around it.  Despite a few sultry scenes in bed, the connection between Emma and Charlie isn’t convincingly fleshed out prior to his realization that the woman he’s going to marry might in fact be dangerous; it obstinately remains more a matter of a scriptwriter’s assurances than a dramatically persuasive reality.  So when the relationship becomes frazzled and threatened with dissolution (after all, weddings can be called off), it’s hard to care. 

The performances of the leads are little help.  Zendaya’s stuck with a character so opaque and uncommunicative that when the picture reaches its peak at the reception, all she can do is pout and screw up her face in irritation.  Pattinson, meanwhile, starts out twitchy and just gets more so as the film progresses.  Borgli managed to induce Nicolas Cage to subdue his usual over-the-top freneticism in their film together, “Dream Scenario,” but here he’s encouraged Pattinson to give in to his worst excesses.

Borgli intends “The Drama” to be a dark satire that upends rom-com conventions by coupling them with observations on the rot in American society.  But the goal is undercut by shallow plotting and insecure execution, culminating in a postscript that suggests the genre’s happy endings must learn to coexist with nasty realities.  The ultimate message appears to be that in life, one must take the bad with the good.  That also applies to movies, and in this case the former outweighs the latter.  The problem with “The Drama” isn’t that it leaves a sour taste; it’s that the sourness comes across as a mere contrivance, much like everything that’s preceded it.