No one seems to understand the lofty aspirations of 14-year-old Griffin (Everett Blunck). At his school talent show, he performs both characters from his play, Regrets of Autumn, a divorce melodrama. He is met with indifferent silence.

Griffin ambitiously plans to mount a full staging of the piece, which he describes as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets American Beauty. He enlists his friends Kara (Abby Ryder Fortson, of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.) to direct, and Winnie (Johanna Colón), Pam (Alivia Bellamy), and Tyler (Gordon Rocks) to star. His rigorous rehearsal schedule doesn’t align with his crew, who are looking for typical, carefree summer pursuits. Meanwhile, there is marital strain between Griffin’s parents: His mother, Helen (Melanie Lynskey), holes up in her bedroom, sometimes drifting to the booze cabinet, and wondering why her husband travels so much for work. To take care of mundane tasks around the house, she hires a moody 25-year-old handyman, Brad (Owen Teague). Lean and muscular in a black T-shirt, he is mostly unemotional and withdrawn, blaring rock music seemingly to shut out the world. Griffin helps unlock Brad’s stunted dreams of becoming a Brooklyn performance artist, and in turn, Griffin goes through his own queer awakening, developing sexual feelings for Brad.

Set in the sleepy town of Borwood (perhaps a play on Norwood, as the names of other Massachusetts towns are specified nearby), the film is at its best when everything hums along in its mostly low-key, natural fashion with Griffin’s ruthlessly single-minded artistic vision at its center. The film falters when it swings too hard to be funny. The writing and performance of Kathryn Newton as Chloe, Brad’s brash, stereotypical girlfriend, feels out of place. Lynskey is always terrific, though her character is underbaked. Teague’s character never quite gels overall. Still, he has some great moments, like Brad’s first stab at rehearsing Griffin’s play and an unearthed video of one of his performance art pieces. The video, “House, Parents, Baby,” isn’t nearly as hilarious as Illena Douglas’s art teacher “Mirror, Father, Mirror” piece from Ghost World, but it’s still a good gag.

Much of the humor in Nicholas Colia’s film derives from a few witty lines and some brilliant theater/movie nerd jokes. Griffin creating an alter-ego email combining the names of two of his beloved actresses, Glenn Close and Annette Bening, is a moment of pure gold. As it did for me, Griffin’s quest to authentically capture a world beyond his years through writing may remind some of their own past, perhaps cringe-inducing, yearnings. Fierce, committed, and darkly funny, Blunck is terrific. He often saves the picture from some of its shortcomings as Griffin frantically tries to create a fully realized work of his own.