LANGUAGE BARRIER: This moronically quirky film, about nut-house escapees who drive a stolen car to Italy with a jar of ashes, doesn't win palatability points for being in German.

Detractors of, say, Wong Kar-Wai like to argue that his floridly romantic dialogue gets a pass from viewers who'd balk if it were spoken in their native tongue. But it turns out that It's Kind of a Funny Story's moronically quirky take on mental illness is no more palatable when it's in subtitled German.

Florian David Fitz plays Vincent, a politician's son with Tourette's syndrome who is institutionalized after his mother's death. First, however, there's a clunker scene where Vincent disrupts his mother's funeral by shouting obscenities to horrified onlookers who seem altogether unaware of his condition. Vincent's nut-house roomie is an obsessive compulsive (Johannes Allmayer) fond of classical music and miniature models — in short, an off-the-shelf caricature betraying a lack of both imagination and research. Karin Thaler's anorexic is no better developed, serving mainly as love interest and sounding board, especially once the makeshift trio hits the road in a doctor's stolen car.

As Vincent and co. make their way to Italy with an aim of scattering his mother's ashes, his dad and psychiatrist (Katharina Müller-Elmau) follow suit, finding even less in common than the people they're pursuing. Predictably, outer shells soften and tentative accords are reached over the long haul, but Fitz's screenplay (his first) provides only rapprochement by fiat: The characters reconcile because the script, and the genre, demand it. There's hugging and learning, but little insight or memorable detail, and the showboat role Fitz has written himself doesn't do him any favors, either.

Vincent Wants to Sea (Vincent will Meer) opens Friday at Ritz at the Bourse.