Scott and Sid is an independent film avowedly inspired by the teenage years of its two writer-directors, former ad creatives Scott Elliott and Sid Sadowskyj: two kids are growing up together in Yorkshire, dreaming big dreams and planning one day to make a movie.

The production standards are solid enough, but frankly the script, acting and directing are deeply uncertain and misjudged, with huge tonal lurches that make for something that’s neither funny nor convincing on any level, and just wouldn’t come up to the standard of the humblest TV drama or comedy.

There’s a wince-makingly embarrassing scene in which Scott and Sid meet two women from a soft-porn nightmare in a London pub; it appears to come straight from the era of Confessions of a Window Cleaner. The whole thing sometimes looks as if it’s an advertisement for itself, like a streaming video on its own Kickstarter page, asking us to buy into Scott and Sid’s aspirations.