Armed with a Southern accent, a tan and the fluffiest blonde wig available, Kristen Wiig plays a socialite wannabe who is equal parts sunny and scheming in the 10-episode comedy of manners “Palm Royale” on Apple TV+.

Set in 1969, she’s a former pageant queen named Maxine Simmons who is staring down middle age and desperate to be embraced by the Florida elite of Palm Beach, so she leverages a tenuous married-in connection: Her himbo airline pilot of a husband (Josh Lucas) is the nephew and sole heir of a Palm Beach grand dame Norma D’ellacourt (Carol Burnett) who is in a coma. With the old lady out of commission, Maxine borrows her last name and worldly possessions and she’s off to the races.

William Thackeray played around with similar themes in his 1848 novel “Vanity Fair” — of a social climber from humble means determined to break into high society — but that’s a tougher idea to hang a story on when the setting is the mid-20th century. Maxine is an outsider who wants in, and the obvious question is why? What does she think will happen if she’s granted entry? When she finally offers a one-line explanation, it’s unpersuasive and nonsensical. Her resolve is admirable, her ambitions hollow.

The rich and insular group of women she gloms onto spend their days drinking by the pool at the country club. At the top of the heap is the caftan-clad patrician snob extraordinaire played by Allison Janney, surrounded by her equally insufferable pals played by Leslie Bibb and Julia Duffy. Everyone is a viper, but Maxine conspires to make herself a useful pawn and she’s not one to back down in the face of threats delivered through the gritted teeth of Palm Beach royalty.

“Ever since my pageant days I’ve maintained a posture of relentless positivity,” she says jauntily. “The other contestants would always underestimate me.” Her delusional and indomitable spirit also involves elder abuse and writing bad checks to the tune of $75,000, and the show can’t decide if it finds these things plucky or horrifying.

Laura Dern plays a wayward rich girl cosplaying as a revolutionary who works at a feminist bookstore called Our Bodies, Our Shelves (I laughed) and she’s swept up into Maxine’s shenanigans. So is a bartender at the country club played by Ricky Martin (his performance of a guy quietly observing everything around him is the most nuanced thing the show has going for it). They are eventually won over by Maxine’s can-do spirit, but their incoherent friendships are less about human connection than narrative expediency. The one Black character in the ensemble, played by Amber Chardae Robinson, exists to roll her eyes at these self-involved Palm Beachers, but is given no interests of her own. Burnett is weirdly underused, but makes the most of her scenes when her character is revealed to be very much Maxine’s equal in the plotting and conniving department.

With “Palm Royale,” Hollywood’s wealthaganda obsession continues unabated. There’s a fizzy delirium to the show that promises more fun than it is. It’s a whirling (swirling?) dervish of meticulously high-end costumes and production design, as Maxine lurches from one lie — and mad scramble to cover it up — to the next. Her signature drink is a grasshopper, which looks delectable every time it arrives on a tray. At least showrunner Abe Sylvia (whose credits include Netflix’s “Dead to Me” and the screenplay for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) has an interest in the class peculiarities specific to Palm Beach, unlike Peacock’s recent “Apples Never Fall,” which takes place in the same locale.

You keep waiting for a larger story arc to emerge, but each set piece feels like vamping and filling time until someone can figure out what this show wants to be about, which makes the 10-episode length baffling. Every so often, there’s a glimpse of President Richard Nixon on a TV in the background talking about the war in Vietnam, which suggests the show is building toward some tangy observations about the emptiness of Palm Beach melodrama versus the reality of war. But no. Nothing of the sort transpires. A social satire lacking bite or even a point of view, “Palm Royale” is as substance-free as the froth and foam left by waves on the beach.

‘Palm Royale’

2 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Apple TV+

Related Articles

‘Apples Never Fall’ review: Annette Bening as a retired mom who goes missing

Movie review: A new canine cycles into our hearts in ‘Arthur the King’

‘One Life’ a true tale of Holocaust hero

What to watch: Kristen Stewart sizzles in wild ‘Love Lies Bleeding’

Starry Skies North screening of award-winning documentary

We have too many troubled feral youths with a strong affinity for stealing cars and vandalizing streetlamps. They know about tools, and if that is too gracious, they are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and tackle electrical systems that would have most of us calling an electrician.

Joe Soucheray

You’re aiming too low, fellows. You steal cars for no other reason than to run a nefarious errand and then you dump it and steal another one. You’ve got a couple of problems. One, you don’t know how to drive. Every report of a stolen car that comes along contains the inevitable paragraph where we learn the driver crashed into a tree or rolled into a pond.

Any 5-year-old kid raised on a farm can drive better than you urban louts. Aren’t you embarrassed? No, really, you don’t have a clue, making you much more dangerous. You have no concept of speed, braking or turning. You are complete morons and we are tired of it.

The next time you steal somebody’s Hyundai, leave it in one piece. You also have no idea what insurance costs.

And speaking of Hyundais and Kias, too, I suppose, I am not going to blame the manufacturers for your temptations. We have elected a political class that believes that Hyundai and Kia purposely designed cars to be easily stolen in the Twin Cities. They did not. Criminals steal cars. Criminals have tools and they can surf Google. There is not a doubt in my mind that these same drifters could just as easily steal Porsches and Jaguars, but it would take a bit longer so they go after the low-hanging fruit.

You should be ashamed of yourselves, fellas, for the way you have embarrassed the moonshiners, main-street drag racers, low riders and dirt-track racers, all of us for that matter. You don’t know a damn thing about cars.

Don’t know if it’s the same crowd, but it’s the same lazy ideology when it comes to streetlights. All you do is leave behind a pitiable mess. For what? How many “help wanted” signs do you pass on your way to the next $7 score of copper wire?

We have old beautiful streetlamps in St. Paul. They cast a civic twilight glow. The ones still working. They speak to a day of better beggars and thieves. By day, the broken ones offer sprung access panels and strands of wire having been snipped. Now that street is dark and restless.

Any day now, the St. Paul City Council, the least diverse city council in America, all young females with the same liberal world view, will probably get around to blaming the manufacturer of the pole for placing the access panel too near the ground. Why, they should have envisioned the misunderstood youth when they designed those lamps.

For cars, buy a standard transmission vehicle while they still last. The thief wouldn’t get 10 feet if he had to work a clutch.

And even if he could use a clutch, he’d probably crash into a streetlamp, knocking another one out of service.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

Related Articles

Jane Eisner: How should we read the texts of Purim and Passover this year?

Bronson, Rieser: The stories that ‘Oppenheimer’ didn’t tell

Trudy Rubin: At this point, White House policy is more pro-Israel than Netanyahu’s

Lisa Jarvis: This brain cancer breakthrough should excite us

F.D. Flam: Not even Antarctica could stop COVID. It’s a crucial lesson.

It doesn’t feel good to beat up on a movie like “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” which is a film with the right intentions: to entertain families looking for spectacle that will please both kids and their Gen X/millennial parents. It’s at least slightly better than its ghoulish predecessor, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” because at least there aren’t any holograms of deceased actors in this one, which is a relief.

Still, there’s very little opportunity for critical examination of this sequel to the “lega-sequel” of the “Ghostbusters” franchise, which already has one failed reboot on its record. What else could one possibly say about “Ghostbusters” in general, and this perfectly fine, but incredibly dull installment specifically? It does exactly what it needs to do for die-hard fans and families seeking a night out at the movies. As a cultural industrial product, it’s emblematic of Hollywood’s obsession with reboots, nostalgia and IP, but that subject has already been talked to death and doesn’t bear repeating.

Those arguments aren’t worth making again, especially when “Frozen Empire” is such an uninspiring example. In its favor, it does try to do something that is both familiar and expansive. The script is by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, the son of original “Ghostbusters” director Ivan Reitman, who passed in 2022 (the film is dedicated “For Ivan”). Though Jason Reitman helmed 2021’s “Afterlife,” Kenan (“Monster House,” “Poltergeist”) steps behind the camera here.

It may be a new generation of Ghostbusters, but the family of the late Egon Spengler find themselves back in New York, in that firehouse headquarters, following “Afterlife’s” jaunt to Oklahoma. In fact, the whole crew finds themselves in New York, not just Callie (Carrie Coon), and her kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace), but also Callie’s boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd), who has joined the phantom-fighting family. Even the kids’ pals Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) are also in New York, interning with the original Ghostbusters, Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson). Yep, the gang’s all here, every last surviving Ghostbuster, including Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), and Annie Potts too, plus a few new characters to boot.

That’s one of the problems with the script, which is that there are far too many characters. Every arc is given short shrift, and most of the story beats are all too predictable. Phoebe’s too young for dangerous urban ghostbusting and feels out of step with her family, Gary doesn’t know how he fits in with the rest of the Spengler clan, etc., etc. These characters may all be in the same place, but every person feels disconnected, preoccupied with their individual dilemma or task. Phoebe makes friends with a ghost who died in a tenement fire; Trevor tries unsuccessfully to catch Slimer. There’s very little chemistry or connection among them, resulting in an unengaging, totally trite and lackluster story.

The one new character who brings some spark is Kumail Nanjiani, playing a burnout loser named Nadeem who pawns his grandmother’s orb at Ray’s paranormal shop. Listen up: never trust an orb. This one houses an ooky-spooky ice lord demon type named Garaka, and he’s the evil Elsa of this land, breathing ice over Manhattan and threatening to unleash every captured ghost. Only Nadeem may have the hereditary gifts to battle such a creature — alongside the brilliant and resourceful young Phoebe Spengler, of course.

The good thing about “Frozen Empire” is that it’s less of that “Easter egg hunt” type cinema that Reitman extolled “Afterlife” as, instead utilizing elements of the original “Ghostbusters” in ways that work within the story. Yet there’s the lingering sensation that it’s still just reconstituted bits and pieces weaponized for a warm reaction. The lore may be better integrated into the story than it was in “Afterlife,” but “Frozen Empire” will still never beat the allegations that it’s merely regurgitated nostalgia aimed at a kiddie crowd.

The good news is that most everyone seems to be having fun. Coon is relaxed, Rudd recites the theme song to great comedic effect, and Murray, Aykroyd, Hudson and Potts are in warm spirits. Everyone else, including Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt, who shows up to deliver some folkloric backstory, just seem happy to be there. British stand-up James Acaster is a welcome sight, even if he is woefully underutilized (once again, there are simply too many people in this movie). But even this cast can’t save the rote machinations of “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” as it dutifully delivers morsels of memory. And yet, it’s likely we’ll be back here in a few years to hash out yet another “Ghostbusters” installment. Fingers crossed there will at least be more to chew on then, good or bad.

‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for supernatural action/violence, language and suggestive references)

Running time: 1:55

How to watch: In theaters Friday

Related Articles

‘Yellowjackets’ and ‘Girlfight’ filmmaker Karyn Kusama’s advice to young directors? Get more sleep

‘Apples Never Fall’ review: Annette Bening as a retired mom who goes missing

Five-ingredient fudge, an ideal Easter recipe for wee kitchen helpers

‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ review: Chilling with friends old and new

‘Palm Royale’ review: Kristen Wiig in a comedy of manners, circa 1969 Palm Beach