BRAD’S STATUS reminds you that you’re not the only one out there bending under a load of self-inflicted guilt over how almost everyone else you know has ‘done better’, often by quite a bit. Sure, many (most?) of Those Who Have It All are also walking wounded from the mine field of the Why? Factor, but that cold-water-lace-bootstraps ‘everyone’ trope tends to be about as comforting as history, politics and the environment when funds are fleeting, romance is a memory, security a mirage and inner peace is something only gurus and mystics (banking their market-cornered wisdom) can gleam over. But enough about me.

“I’m alive…”   Raise your hand (not the one with the drink, doobie, pills or pistol) if you’ve ever answered that way to “How are you?”

At 47, ‘Brad Sloan’ (Ben Stiller, 51) seems to have done all right. He runs an NGO, has a bright and loving wife (charmer Jenna Fischer, 43, as ‘Melanie’) and his son ‘Troy’ (Austin Abrams, 20) has his pick of Ivy League colleges. But Brad is haunted and hurt, by the greater financial and creative success of his old college friends and by their excluding him from get-togethers. ‘Craig’ (Michael Sheen) works in the White House and has a best-seller on the racks; ‘Jason’ (Luke Wilson) runs a zillion-buck hedge fund; another is retired on Maui with two dazzling wahines, one more is a lauded movie director.

There are some funny moments in this dramedy, but in the main it’s a poignant (for some, exasperating) look at inner-directed anger, sabotage under the smile, with perfectly cast Stiller adding this painfully acute portrait of middle-aged misery to his excellent, if audience-discomfiting Greenberg from 2010. Brad has more on the ball than that movie’s reeling ‘Roger’, but whether he can re-discover that and live with it is the meat and message of this small-scale, scalpel-wielder, written & directed by Mike White, who also plays one of the Blessed buddies.

Abrams is very good as the son, for the most part patient as a saint with his taxing dad; Sheen skillfully covers smug-served-as-bonhomie’; and as ‘Ananya’, a vibrant student friend of Troy, Shazi Raja, 16, is impressive in her feature debut.

“Her friend, Maya was equally captivating, equally compelling. I suddenly felt a deep grief… for all the women I would never love and all the lives I would never live.”

Decently reviewed, little seen; the US gross of $2,133,000 placed 161st in 2017. The international take managed $1,672,000.

With Jemaine Clement, Jimmy Kimmel, Luisa Lee, Devon Packer, Jane Wheeler. 101 minutes.