Nick Kroll and Rose Byrne in Adult Beginners (Radius-TWC)

A selfish late twenties/early thirties Manhattan tech marketing entrepreneur, Jake crashes and burns and is forced to return to his humble family roots to rebuild his life. If this sounds familiar, it should. Adult Beginners is executive produced by Mark and Jay Duplass. Virtually all of their many movies are deep studies of immature, mediocre 30-year-olds, weaned on Judd Apatow movies and video games, gliding through life before eventually Learning About Responsibility, often from some previously estranged family members.

It’s easy to draw dismissive comparisons to Jeff Who Lives at Home, Greenberg, The Skeleton Twins, or even Blue Jasmine, and a whole bunch more. Yes, this is yet another mumblecore deep dive into the very toe jam of contemporary bourgeois ennui, complete with the main characters asking each other if they’re really happy while tears roll down cheeks. There have been so many of these movies that it might be time for someone to do what Scary Movie did for horror films and make an Ennui Movie. But Adult Beginners does enough new things, with fresh intelligence, that it’s well worth seeing.

It offers the first dramatic role for television’s Nick Kroll, who showed great versatility and comic mania on his eponymous show, as well as on The League. It’s always fun to see actors who look like Kroll, with huge, bulging, permanently stoned-looking eyes, play the lead. He brings to mind a young Jon Lovitz. Here Kroll plays a version of his douchey League character, pimping a Google Glass knockoff to get rich.

Google Glass itself didn’t work out, so you can imagine how Jake’s half-assed version fared. His lavish, cocaine-fueled launch party, with all of his equally vacuous, hedonistic investors/”friends,” (played by Joel McHale and Mike Birbiglia in glorified cameos) thins out immediately when he gets dire news about his business.

All of this happens in about the first four minutes, and before we know it, Jake, penniless and without a place to live, is on a Metro North train to the suburban home of his sister, Justine (Rose Byrne). She has a three-year-old son, Teddy, and is pregnant with another. Her life with her architect husband, Danny (Bobby Cannavale), represents everything that Jake, in his fratty rebelliousness, resents. They live stable, predictable lives, devoid of the razzle-dazzle Jake spent his life fruitlessly chasing, but he grows to respect what they’ve built. Danny seems to be impressed by Jake’s “coolness,” and is psyched to have someone to join him on his clandestine weed smoking sessions, which are depicted with perfect realism.

Justine and Danny give Jake a job “mannying” for Teddy, and Jake loves it at first when he thinks it will just be hanging out and playing with the kid. Predictably, he loses interest after learning that it will require hard work to keep Teddy safe until he realizes that he can use his nephew as bait for attracting other nannies. As a result, Jake enjoys a playdate tryst with fellow nanny Bianca (Paula Garces), but their relationship is fraught with the tension of Jake genuinely trying to have emotional connections after years of hollow posturing covering his depression, and Bianca, being a fairly well-adjusted person, has no interest in any unpleasant heavy emotional lifting.

While there are some laughs, there aren’t many, and they are generally modest and specific. There is a welcome scene where Jake and an old high school acquaintance, Paul Reggio (Bobby Moynihan), bump into each other at a store, which unfolds with the best of the Apatow/Adam McKay film comedy improv ease and charm.

The cast list is stuffed with other recognizable names (Mike Birbiglia, Jane Krakowksi, Joel McHale, Josh Charles), but each has maybe a couple of minutes of screen time, and Moynihan is really in only that one scene. The movie essentially consists of the three main characters moping around. Chris Rock’s recent Top Five was perhaps the most egregious example of this trend where famous names are plastered all over movie posters while each one has a glorified cameo.

Cannavale, though, is given a lot to do, expanding and deepening the character he played in Blue Jasmine, the good-hearted, but flawed spouse/boyfriend of the protagonist’s sibling, now sporting a gut. It’s incredible how well he balances sliminess with bonhomie, and one of the best reasons to see Adult Beginners is to be continually conflicted over whether or not Danny is a good person.

Meanwhile, Jake sees everyone, especially his nephew Teddy, as supporting actors in the movie of his life and as opportunities to experience emotions he hasn’t yet. Upon learning that Justine is pregnant with a girl, Jake says, “I’m gonna be a girl’s uncle!” It’s all about him until the film’s latter part that depicts how he learns to empathize in convincing, well-observed detail.

Jake’s selfishness is odd, as he doesn’t really have many distinctive qualities, let alone accomplishments, meaningful long-term friendships, or formative romantic relationships. It’s an insightful depiction of how lonely narcissists really are, and how it’s never too late to shed the more unpleasant aspects of adolescence.