The premise of Skills Like This (Monty Miranda, US, 2009) is cute enough: The day before his 25th birthday, Max Solomon (Spencer Berger, who also wrote the script) comes to grips with his ineptitude as a writer. In a moment of existential desperation, he discovers his true talent: Robbery. Accompanied by his two best friends, Max adopts a life of crime, discovering his calling and finding romance, until his crimes start to hit home.

But the flaws with Skills Like This are stark and many: Characters are reduced to caricatures, the hipster script rings false, the plot is beyond predictable, and the attempts to add “arty” shots read like a cover for the boring story.  Basically, it’s a movie that relies on charming a specific demographic into ignoring its flaws–kind of like many bestselling novels.

The aforementioned caricatures include our protagonist, Max, and his two buddies, Tommy (Brian D. Phelan) and Dave (Gabriel Tigerman). In one neat bunch we have: The brooding artist, the slacker dude, and the nerdy corporate sellout. Tommy (the slacker) actually thinks that “money laundering” means washing stolen cash to get out any dyes the banks could use for tracking. Uptight Dave finally starts to relax and gets a tattoo–but ends up with a classic design bearing the unfinished phrase “No regr.” And a shared moment in the bank between Max and the cute teller, Lucy (Kerry Knuppe), develops into the film’s central romance.  Altogether, it’s just too convenient to be true–or thought-provoking.

To be fair, Skills Like This includes one mildly interesting idea. After his frustrated attempts at writing, Max starts to think of larceny as an art. The idea that inherent personality traits–in this case, artistic obsessiveness–determine a person’s approach to any act, including bank robbing, is intriguing. Unfortunately, it is handled without any subtlety here. “You are sick!” shouts Lucy.  “You think this is some kind of art!”  All of a sudden, the discoveries I was making about Max’s character were taken from me and encapsulated in an overplayed, melodramatic line. I felt consistently underestimated by Miranda, and nothing irks me like condescending art.

It’s entirely possible that I’m just a killjoy, and that Skills Like This is a thoroughly enjoyable indie flick.  Hey, the audience at South by Southwest loved it.  Find out for yourself this week at SIFF Cinema, where Skills Like This plays today through Thursday the 9th, daily at 8pm, and more often during the weekend.