It would be nice to write a review of Supergirl while blissfully unaware of the discourse flowing around it like the crosswinds a caped do-gooder needs to navigate while flying from one place to another. Alas, we don’t get to pick the planets where we reside. Some of them blow up due to unstable cores and some of them are populated by too many fragile dudes who stupidly believe that a female superhero is their Kryptonite. I wish I didn’t know that there’s a whole army of testy trolls who are rooting against Supergirl when I declare that the movie is not good.

As the film begins, Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock, giving a strong, charismatic performance) is in a funk that she soothes with off-planet libations. Alcohol has no effect on her when she’s spending time on Earth. As is the case with Clark Kent (David Corenswet), her cousin who’s a fellow refugee from the planet Krypton, Kara has astounding superpowers when she’s basked in the rays of the galaxy’s yellow sun. Her preferred form of boozy self-medication requires zipping off to parts of the universe with fiery orbs of different colors. While on a birthday bender, Kara encounters space pirates known as Brigands, led by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), a fiend so maniacal that he shoots her dog, Krypto, with a poison dart. The only way to save the pooch is to retrieve the antidote from the Brigands.

Kara’s quest is joined by Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a girl whose family was murdered by the Brigands during the same incursion that felled Krypto. The dynamic between Kara and Ruthye recalls that between the two lead characters of True Grit: snarly maverick and headstrong girl. (The screenplay credited to Ana Nogueira more or less adapts the recent miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, written by Tom King and drawn by Bilquis Evely.) The characters never feel connected. They’re moving through the universe together because the plot demands it and nothing more. There’s a similar problem with the appearances of Lobo, who’s played by Jason Momoa and seems to be in the movie only because someone orchestrating the DC cinematic presence is irritated that this obvious casting choice was bypassed earlier to put the actor into Aquaman‘s trunks. Every time he roars into frame, the film stops dead.

There are some enjoyable details as Kara moves through the underbelly of the universe, but even that colorful messiness seems like a retread of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies that were directed by current DC movies overseer James Gunn. Mostly, though, the adventures bounding across other planets and spaceports are a dud. The filmmakers repeatedly take the simplest route to both setting up problems and then solving them. There are too many sequences that hinge on Kara waiting around for a yellow sun to show up, which ultimately robs the character of agency. It’s a pretty passive protagonist who literally finds her strength only because the world turns in her favor.

Director Craig Gillespie is equally clumsy in handling the feminist subtext and the big, noisy scenes of action. I’m loath to call for a film that trudges through another origin, but the far more interesting Supergirl story in seen only in fleeting flashbacks in which a lost, uncertain Kara arrives on a planet distant from her home and has to adjust to a place that feels noisy, cold, and foreign. There’s a fine familial chemistry between Alcock and Corenswet in these scenes, and my interest was piqued to find out how this lost little girl turned into a rebellious young adult. Supergirl takes its place out among the stars, but it could have soared had it stayed earthbound.