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Netflix Original movie DJ Cinderella — or Cinderela Pop in Portuguese — adds to the growing heap of derivations on the classic fairy tale. This cutesy Brazilian film is a sort-of musical update, but will it differentiate itself from the Disney animated classic, or the Disney CGI update, or A Cinderella Story, or Ever After, or The Glass Slipper, or If the Shoe Fits, or Maid to Order or… should I stop there? I’ll stop there.

DJ CINDERELLA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Maisa Silva plays teenager Cintia Dorella (groan), who dreams of being a professional DJ. Her parents have a mansion and zillions of dollars, and like to throw extravagant parties. One of the musicians playing at their latest shindig is Freddy Prince (groan) (Filipe Braganca); he bumps into Cintia and clashes with Patricia (Fernanda Paes Leme), the wicked party planner. Before you can contemplate why the writers would want to confuse us with a name so close to Freddie Prinze Jr., Patricia is caught mashing face with Dad Dorella (Marcelo Valle), setting into motion the inevitable establishment of the nasty-stepmother and suffering-Cinderella archetypes.

Two years later, while Mom Dorella (Miriam Freeland) is off doing archaeology things and such in another country, Cintia is living with her wacky aunt Helena (Elisa Pinheiro) and getting pro tips from Helena’s DJ boyfriend, Rafa (Sergio Malheiros). Cintia is schoolmates with her preening, awful stepsisters Gisele (Kiria Malheiros) and Graziele (Leticia Faria Pedro). And Freddy is a social media-born star singer-songwriter whose mooshy love songs make John Mayer sound like Slayer.

Through a series of quasi-comic circumstances, Cintia is accidentally hired to DJ her stepsisters’ birthday masquerade party, and… never mind. I risk tedium by detailing further narrative convolutions. Suffice to say, the plot puts Freddy at the party, and he falls in love at first sight with Cintia, but doesn’t know who she is because of her mask. She leaves behind one of her sneakers, and he quests to find the girl who’s obviously his happily ever after, and therefore pleasing the formula-fulfillment gods. Meanwhile, malicious Patricia schemes to connect Graziele with Freddy, and punish Cintia for merely existing.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Every Cinderella movie ever — but this time, with more internet!

Performance Worth Watching: The screenplay treats its cast members equally, in the sense that nobody is given anything interesting to do or say. Pinheiro does her best to wring a few laughs out of her comic-relief role, but she’s fly fishing in the Gobi here.

Memorable Dialogue: Freddy’s signature song includes the lyric “Lost in distraction/Feeling the breeze blowing a name/That I don’t understand,” the poetry of which must be lost in translation. I hope.

Sex and Skin: This is a nice, squeaky-clean family movie.

Our Take: I hated Patricia. Hated her. Her cruelty knows no bounds. She spends most of the second half of the movie heaping malice upon poor Cintia, and it’s frustrating to watch. The movie is obviously building to her great comeuppance, but the only thing I would have found satisfying was to see her shoved a couple streaming apps over, right into the ruthless deathscape of Chernobyl.

Otherwise, there’s a flimsy, saccharine chirpiness to DJ Cinderella that manifests when a movie is trying too hard to be funny and colorful. Its filmmaking style is that of the 14th-best Hallmark Channel Original from 2002. Cintia is a total bore of a lead character. The screenplay’s ideas about love and romance are about as deep as a petri dish full of sea monkeys. In the third act, the plot throws in prom and graduation for no reason except to adhere to deathless teen-movie cliches. But hey, at least the puppy is adorable!

Our Call: SKIP IT. Unless you’re 12, and therefore haven’t achieved full cognitive development yet.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream DJ Cinderella on Netflix