This game isn’t worth time, effort of playing

and “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.” The people here know how to get laughs, if there are laughs to be had. And even when there aren’t laughs to be had, they can sometimes find one. Or two. Three, tops.

In his first theatrical film, director Jeff Tomsic doesn’t do much with the actors but ride the erratic tides of the script. He doesn’t try to make sense of the characters, but rather allows (or encourages) the cast to make extreme choices — whatever extreme choice it takes to get a laugh in the moment. The result is that he ends up emphasizing the weaknesses and inconsistencies of the script, rather than mitigating them.

Still it’s the script, by Rob McKittrick and Mark Steilen, that is the main problem here. It takes its inspiration from a 2013 Wall Street Journal article about a group of middle-aged guys who have been playing an

Directed by Jeff Tomsic. MPAA rating: R (for language throughout, crude sexual content, drug use and brief nudity) Running time: 1:40 Now showing at the Columbus 10, Crosswoods, Dublin Village 18, Easton 30, Georgesville Square 16, Grove City 14, Lennox 24, Movies 11 at Mill Run, Movies 12 at Carriage Place, Movies 16 Gahanna, Pickerington and Polaris 18 theaters

elaborate game of tag for decades. Later, over the closing credits, we see just enough footage of the real guys as to wonder whether “Tag” might have worked better as a documentary.

The obvious additions made by the screenwriters don’t help, including a shameless downer ending that the movie doesn’t even have the honesty to treat as a downer. I’d go into much detail, but, alas, there are other people reading this, and they might actually go see this thing.

So the deal is that there are five guys in their mid40s, who have been playing tag since 1983. The month of May is tag season, which means that for the entire month it’s possible to be tagged as “It,” usually by some friend jumping out from the bushes or showing up in an elaborate disguise.

The gimmick, which seems fictional, is that one of them is like a ninja of tag. He has never been “It.” This fellow is Jerry, played by Jeremy Renner. The rest of the cast team up to tag Jerry, at a time when he would seem to be most vulnerable — at his wedding. So that’s the story. Everybody wants to tag Jerry. And once the movie settles on that as its main engine of the story, the whole apparatus slowly and then rapidly falls apart.

Right off the top, several things go wrong. Jerry is a dead character, a stonefaced creep. But because the movie has an investment in his invincibility, most of the movie must consist of the other guys trying and failing to tag him. This becomes tiresome and even a bit distasteful. And then there is the other problem, that we can’t be made to care about this tag game as much as the characters. So nothing is at stake, none of it matters, there’s no investment in character, and it’s the same scene over and over again — not a recipe for a great time.

“Tag” must have seemed like a smart idea for a movie, but it turned out not to be. In the last 20 minutes, “Tag” resorts to the fake sentiment of a bad sitcom to try to make sense of itself, and that just compounds the crimes against comedy. Despite the talent on screen, there just wasn’t a movie here.

“Tag.”