On Oct. 9 – the closing night of the Milwaukee Film Festival – producer and screenwriter Jeff Gendelman, who hails from the Milwaukee area, took the stage in the main house to introduce "The Surface." The film has been in development for nearly 20 years, and after many rewrites, it finally moved into production last summer with an almost entirely Milwaukee-based crew and a cast of stars brighter than the usual Milwaukee production.

Unfortunately, "The Surface" sinks thanks to an absurdly inept screenplay that could’ve used a few more rewrites – and by rewrites, I don’t mean a few kinks to sort out. I mean an entirely new screenplay altogether. It was around the halfway mark of the film where I wanted jump off the boat quickly and swim as far away as possible – and I’m not much of a swimmer to begin with.

Sean Astin ("The Goonies," "The Lord of the Rings") stars as Mitch, a man who’s on the verge of emotional collapse. In the opening few minutes, he drags himself out bed and prepares himself for the day, one in which he’s set out to take his father’s boat out on Lake Michigan and commit suicide by drinking bleach and nitroglycerin that he's stored in glass bottles (keep up with me please, it gets worse).

The reason for his depression is because he had witnessed his father’s violent death … and maybe it had something to do with his ex-girlfriend that dumped him, moved to New York with another man and then died from a rollerblading accident in Central Park (seriously, I wish I was kidding).

Either way, he no longer cares what he does in life because his depression has overtaken him. He crumples up a job application that was graciously given to him at the nursing home where his mother stays. He has only one last goal.

Mitch makes his way out as far as he possibly can on the boat where the Milwaukee skyline is far behind him. He plans on going through with his plan with no one else around. Right at the moment he was about to take a lethal swig … BAM! His boat collides with wreckage floating in the middle of the lake. As he looks closer, the wreckage is from a small crashed plane, leaving Kelly (Chris Mulkey, "Twin Peaks," "Captain Phillips") alive but in not-so-great shape. Mitch drags him onto his small boat, bewildered as to what he should do as the boat has now run out of gas.

What follows is a snore fest of these men chatting back and forth about their own problems and how they’ve gotten to that point. With only Rice Krispy treats at their disposal as a food source and a small glass bottle of vodka, Mitch and Kelly struggle to find a way back to shore after their radio falls into a bucket of urine and the flare gun is conveniently knocked into the lake.

It would’ve been a great set-up for something far more compelling, but compelling isn’t the word that comes directly to mind when describing what happens on the boat when the two men start to interact shortly after their destructive meet-cute. Their interactions are more along the lines of powerless and insignificant. Let me put it this way: If you were a fly on the boat as these two men were talking, you’d pray to be swatted.

Gendelman wrote the screenplay, which he toted as being based on a true story before the screening began, but I find this implausible. The characters don’t seem like real people. They’re essentially lightly animated cardboard cutouts, one who suffers from depression and another who suffers from being a fool.

The actors and the characters deserve a much better screenplay, one that isn’t afraid to take some risks with its characters and one that doesn’t lose gas when the boat in the film does. Instead, we’re left with characters that are dreadfully boring and uninteresting. Even their backstories are hogwash, of course shown as flashbacks. You can tell these are flashbacks because of how slurred the imagery is, a technique that I’d expect high school students to do for an amateurish video project.

Astin is fine in the film as Mitch. He isn’t terrible, but he certainly isn’t outstanding either. During the more emotionally heavier moments, you can tell that he gives an effort even it won’t put him in contention for any awards. Mulkey, on the other hand, hams it up as Kelly, a man who finds himself in a tough spot beyond just being stuck in the boat.

During one particular scene, Kelly is on the verge of succumbing to his injuries, but judging from Mulkey’s over-the-top performance, I thought it was meant to be one of those "Aha! Gotcha!" moments followed by a winking smirk. Instead, I was confused to discover that the scene was meant to be serious. Oops. Oh, and Mimi Rodgers briefly shows up later on in the film as Kelly’s concerned wife. Blink once or twice, and you’ll miss her.

If you get motion sick easily, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the screen. Director Gil Cates Jr. and cinematographer Jimmy Sammarco rig the camera onto the boat, and this technique makes us feel like we’re on the boat with them throughout a large portion, which can be considered a bad thing as the image swims along in a queasy motion. This made me feel as if I had just drank a tall glass of bleach along with a nitroglycerin chaser. I understand it’s a low budget film, but on the same token, I’ve seen films with lower budgets that look supremely better than this.

What should be celebrated about "The Surface" are its Milwaukee roots. After all, it was shot entirely in the city, a city in which deserves more attention from the film industry (if only the state still offered those tax credits). Although Cates, Jr. got a little obsessive of showing the skyline over and over, it was a reminder that a lot of hardworking, creative folks in southeastern Wisconsin were employed to hone their skills on set. It’s just too bad that the film had to be "The Surface." Quite frankly, they deserve better and so does Milwaukee.