Big Gold Brick

More exhausting than endearing, Big Gold Brick is an elliptical and introspective character study about someone who’s hardly worth the trouble, at least not in a sympathetic sense.

At its core, it satirizes suburban affluence and truth in the literary process, but even for those on the same absurdist wavelength, the film is too rambling and disjointed to make a more profound impact.

“I didn’t believe in fate, destiny, kismet — whatever you want to call it,” begins the persistent unreliable narration of Sam (Emory Cohen), a fledgling young writer who is hit by a car being driven by Floyd (Andy Garcia), a charismatic businessman.

As compensation, Floyd allows Sam to move into his upscale house and become his paid biographer. He’s got quite a story to tell, although it soon becomes clear that his life is filled with contradictions and fanciful narratives that don’t hold up to logical scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Sam has issues of his own, due to past trauma and present insecurities, plus hints that he eventually becomes more successful in the future as he weaves Floyd’s outlandish tales with his own.

As their surrogate father-son relationship meanders along, how much is real versus imagined? You might not care enough to figure it out as both men confront their inner demons.

The aggressively idiosyncratic screenplay by rookie director Brian Petsos tries to juggle wildly disparate tones with varying degrees of success. The dueling biographies take a back seat to Petsos’ self-indulgent stylistic flourishes and the obligatory eclectic choices on the soundtrack.

The film generates some scattered laughs yet is less effective when it tries to flesh out Sam’s back story by probing his tormented headspace with too many detours into his paranoid fantasies.

Other subplots go nowhere, such as Floyd’s mentorship of a high school basketball star (Tevin Wolfe) and Sam’s awkward attempts to woo Floyd’s daughter (Lucy Hale). The film squanders a supporting cast including Megan Fox as Floyd’s trophy wife and Oscar Isaac as an over-the-top mobster with a machine-gun fetish.

Ultimately, the stuffy and pretentious traits exhibited by both characters carry over to the film itself, as Big Gold Brick fails to pay off.

Not rated, 132 minutes.