Ten Thousand Saints is a sweet puppy dog of a movie, constantly rubbing its nose in your lap. All of its characters are tremendously messed up yet lovable. You just want to give everyone a big hug. And therein lies the problem. For a film about teen pregnancy, drug abuse, hardcore punk, and the gentrification of the Big Apple, it’s entirely too sedate. It’s so suffused with nostalgia that it does its characters disservice. It’s like watching a stone thrown sidearm skipping across the ocean. It never digs deep enough for us to care about the characters in it. Save for one exception, everyone feels like they are playing a part in a movie. When the actors are Emily Mortimer, Hailee Steinfeld, Asa Butterfield, and Emile Hirsch, you know that the fault lies elsewhere.

Butterfield plays Jude, a disaffected teen living with his mother and sister in Vermont. His dad (Ethan Hawke) was kicked out years ago and has had limited contact since. There is much understandable resentment on Jude’s part, who acts out as many teens do with drugs and listening to music that make their parents’ ears bleed (in this case punk, specifically hardcore). One night his dad’s girlfriend’s daughter, Eliza (got that), stops into town on her way to boarding school. She meets Jude and his best friend, Teddy (Avan Jogia), and they head to a party. She sleeps with Teddy and moves on. Jude and Teddy huff some Freon (ah, what one does to get high when you only have an allowance) and Teddy, who was given cocaine, dies.

Jude is sent to New York to live with his dad, Lester, a laid-back fuck-up and pot grower who women somehow can’t resist. Jude hunts down Teddy’s brother, Johnny (Hirsch), who sings in a hardcore band, and Eliza (Steinfeld) discovers she is pregnant with Teddy’s baby. Jude, Johnny, and Eliza decide to keep the pregnancy secret from the adults. That’s a lot of plot, and we are now only a third of the way in. Luckily, writer-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini are pros and they lay the groundwork cleanly and efficiently.

The problem is everything is a bit too clean. There are roiling emotions going on within all the main characters, yet they seem genteel and sedate. Even when Hirsch is singing with his band, Army of One, he’s just so cuddly. Butterfield walks through his part as if he’s shell-shocked, which is understandable in the beginning, but you don’t see growth or maturity. Steinfeld, though, is allowed a moment or two to show her chops. Hirsch, one of the best actors of his generation, manages to bring some of Johnny’s turmoil to the surface.

The only character that seems to jump off the page is Lester, and Ethan Hawke plays him to the hilt. It’s one of the best performances I’ve seen from the always underrated actor. He gives Lester a raggedy charm and genuine warmth that allows you to understand why everyone overlooks his prodigious shortcomings. The scene where he tells his son about his anxiety in the waiting room when Jude was born is simply a master class in acting. He is the beating heart of the film and the ragged center beneath the too polished exterior.

There are compelling themes here. The youths are desperately looking to create a stable family unit to counter their families’ dysfunction. Change is all around them: in the city, fluctuating family situations, impending parenthood, and the actual physical change of Eliza. It makes sense for them to cling together as if they are building a raft for themselves.

There are lovely touches as well. Some adults are constantly present in their lives, occasionally angry, but wanting to help and support. In Lester’s case, not always in the most constructive manner, but his heart’s in it, so that counts for something.

There is so much that’s likable in the film, but it is just too clean. Presented so smoothly and predictably, it feels geared for Oscar night. The characters are constantly making unpredictable decisions, but Springer-Berman and Pulcini don’t seem to trust them enough to follow them though. Which is a shame, because there’s a great film somewhere in Ten Thousand Saints.