Swift misses boat

If you want deep dish on T-Swift, you’re better off listening to her songs than watching this

I F you think the moon landing was staged, just wait till you see “Miss Americana,” the new documentary about pop star Taylor Swift.

Most of the film is more wooden than Pinocchio, offering little insight into a deeply enigmatic figure and mostly reiterating what we already know about one of the world’s most famous women.

Swift works very hard. Duh, she’s released seven albums in 13 years. Kanye West storming the stage during her VMAs win was upsetting. Um, yeah! She had her first taste of a burrito two years ago. All right, I didn’t know that.

Here’s the thing: Swift, 30, cherishes her privacy — and she says so a gazillion times in “Miss Americana.” She is the rare celebrity who can stay intensely relevant while keeping mostly mum. And there’s nothing wrong with that . . . unless you are participating in a documentary about your own life.

Truth be told, her song “Fifteen” is far more revealing than anything in this purported behind-the-scenes glimpse.

“Miss Americana” begins with Swift sitting at the piano in her Tennessee home as her kitten walks all over the keys. It looks like a TV ad. Then, against the windowsill of what appears to be her childhood bedroom — everything here is as vague as a D-student’s book report — she runs down the themes of the doc: She always wanted to be a “good girl”; “those pats on the head were all I lived for”; ”I became the person everybody wanted me to be.”

That sets up the rest of the movie to be Swift trying to break free of her constant aim to please.

The biggest section is devoted to her coming out of the political closet in 2018 as a supporter of the Democratic nominee in Tennessee for US Senate. We watch the moment she tweets out her endorsement of Phil Bredesen, flanked by her mom, publicist and a bottle of white wine. Sorry, but staring at a person as they tweet isn’t exciting, even when that person is Taylor Swift.

Politics is one of the only subjects Swift seems comfortable discussing with director Lana Wilson at length. Bringing up her quest for love, she laments the loneliness of fame — then adds that she found someone and they “decided together that we wanted our relationship to be private.”

There is an upside here, though. Swift has so many impressionable young fans who will watch “Miss Americana” countless times, and she does bring up a few personal troubles that will be good for them to hear about. The singer talks about her struggle with an “unhealthy” relationship with food, and how she’s come to realize that “it’s better to think you look fat than look sick.” That’s a strong message in the Instagram age.

And when we learn her mom, Andrea, is in a battle with cancer, Swift says it gave her perspective on her online bullies. “Do you really care that the Internet doesn’t like you if your mom is sick from her chemo?” she asks.

Regardless, “Miss Americana” is far too coy a documentary to fully satisfy anybody.