Straining to meld a love triangle with an astronomy lesson, the rom-com The Brightest Star disappears into a black hole of clich.

Chris Lowell (an isotope of John Krasinski) plays a mild college student who gets sucked into the gravitational pull of the planet-size eyes of a blond cutie (Rose McIver) in astronomy class. Altering his career trajectory, he orbits around her while taking a depressing corporate job. But isnt his true kindred spirit an artsy downtown folk singer (Jessica Szohr) who rejects the 9-to-5 life?

As dull as the situation is, the execution is even duller. Our doe-eyed young man receives wisdom from an actual astronomer (Allison Janney, the movies only saving grace) and learns that sometimes looking as far away as we can is just a way of ignoring whats right in front of us. Still, any scene containing Janney beats the dopey falling-in-love bits that rely on dialogue like, If we were a color, what color would we be? I dunno, is bland a color?

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Few ‘Stars’ shine bright in this formulaic rom-com