Sydney Sweeney’s new movie is terrible

Who cares about a jeans ad?

Sydney Sweeney’s real controversy is the bell-bottom-of-the-barrel quality of her new movie, “Americana.”

Newish, that is. The wannabe Western crime drama premiered at South By Southwest back in March 2023 and is only now skulking into some theaters.

It’s a violently annoying and annoyingly violent ensemble piece speckled with “look how wacky we are!” characters that are impossible to put up with; a copycat Coen Brothers yarn with the depth of a tortilla.

The cast breakdown reads like a parody. 

Sweeney plays Penny Jo, a shy South Dakota waitress who dreams of becoming a country singer but has a stammer. 

We are supposed to accept that the constantly photographed Sweeney is a wallflower nobody pays any attention to. The actress’ fake speech impediment, meanwhile, comes off both rehearsed and not nearly rehearsed enough. 

Penny Jo finally gets some human face time with a creepy loser. That’s Lefty (Paul Walter Hauser), a breathy schlub who has proposed to four women this year alone. Despite his name, he’s right-handed and tells everybody that.

There’s a little boy named Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman), who insists he’s the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, and shoots his mom’s abusive boyfriend, Dillon (Eric Dane), with an arrow.

He links up with Native American Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon), the leader of a gun-totin’ group that protects their tribal legacy with rifles. He says he took his moniker from the Forest Whitaker indie “Ghost Dog.” 

And spitfire Mandy (Halsey) has escaped from her father’s Warren Jeffs-type sex cult.

And on and on. I was fed up with “Americana” by minute 10, and the succeeding 100 did nothing to change my mind.

Everybody in this quirk brigade is trying to get their hands on a rare Native American ghost shirt that’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ghost Eye wants the garment for its historic significance. The rest are hungry for the cash. At one point, a group of pretentious rich snobs displays it in their living room. The points writer-director Tony Tost makes are painfully obvious.

Based on her prominence on the poster, you’d think so-so Sweeney is the lead. But the roles are equal in size — and irritation — and if there is any focal point, it’s Halsey’s Mandy, who has a meatier arc. 

Though, spoiler alert, Penny Jo finds her voice at the end, as our eyes remain desert dry. 

Tost bets that eccentricities will distract from his meandering, repetitive story that amounts to an object changing hands a few times. 

Under more assured direction, the shoddy script could have amounted to something mediocre at least. When the Coens or Quentin Tarantino amp up the weird in their dark depictions of a dusty America, they do so with unsettling style and an enticingly skewed vision of reality to match.

Of course, they, unlike Tost, also write strong screenplays.

His “Americana” is lifelessly visualized. Eye candy? Eye toothpaste. 

Pair pat-on-the-back lofty themes with bland imagery and artificially kooky characters speaking hokey, unconvincing dialogue, and you get a great big bore.

“Americana” ends on a bloody standoff, an emotional death and a heartfelt reunion. 

And it’s all as engrossing and moving as a tumbleweed.