IN THE SPOTLIGHT

fried egg sandwiches for friends. Amber Appleton is always helping, helping, helping.

So when slowly, ever so slightly, her life starts to collapse, Amber Appleton has to learn to accept the very thing she’s always handing out: help. Have plenty of tissues nearby when you watch the top-notch Netflix film “All Together Now,” a teary tale of fellowship.

The movie is based on “Silver Linings Playbook” author Matthew Quick’s novel “Sorta Like a Rock Star” and is elevated by a touching, marvelous Auli’i Cravalho as the girl who loves giving but not necessarily receiving.

Cravalho’s Amber is a musically gifted high school student with aspirations to attend Carnegie Mellon but her personal life is close to the edge: She and her single mom are homeless, sleeping in one of the school buses her mom drives for work.

Mom (an excellent Justina Machado) frets about the future and considers returning to an abusive man just for the shelter, but her daughter stays optimistic: “We’re gonna be awesome. We’re gonna be spectacular.”

But little by little, Amber is stripped of all the things that give her meaning and security. A harder, darker Amber emerges.

It helps when you have an actress like Cravalho, who allows us to see pools of sadness, yearning and hunger behind her eyes. The “Moana” singer also gets to belt out a moving tune. You couldn’t ask for more from her in her first leading role in a live action movie: She’s awesome. She’s spectacular.

Allyson Riggs / Associated Press Auli’i Cravalho, left, and Rhenzy Feliz in a scene from “All Together Now.”