If modern cinema has taught us anything at all, it’s that stories about neurotic Jewish guys from New York relocating to Los Angeles are never, ever not funny (and to always bet on the movie with the sexy vampire).

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg is drawing from that same genuine goldmine of New-York-people-are-like-this-but-LA-people-are-totally-like-this plotlines that worked so well so often for Woody Allen and Larry David. Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is our 40-year-old anxiety-ridden New Yorker (a California expatriate), house-sitting for his wealthy brother in L.A. and otherwise doing absolutely nothing at all, having only recently checked himself out of a mental institution. His life is pushed together with that of Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig), his brother’s personal assistant and aspiring (if half-hearted) singer, who’s hit a streak of emotionless, awkward one-night stands. While Greenberg tries to connect with old friends and enemies — who are often one in the same, due to a distant mistake in Greenberg’s life that alienated him from most of his friends — he and Florence find themselves becoming closer, seemingly more from sheer inertia than from much genuine attraction.

Florence is both attracted to Greenberg’s vulnerability and repelled by his, well, overpowering dickishness, but they’re both too bored and too lonely to say no. And, as Greenberg stirs up old dirt, his search for his own identity intertwines with Florence’s.

The Words of the Day here are “the human comedy.” Greenberg valiantly confronts all the failures and compromises and alienation and discontent that comes with being human — all the pain and sadness that, when you step back (as Baumbach does) is actually pretty funny. And The Office has nothing on Greenberg’s comedy of the awkward; I’m not sure I’ve ever delightfully cringed quite as much as I did during this movie. To Baumbach’s credit, he never averts his eyes from the parts of life (and the people in life) that can be downright soul-crushing to look at, and he never once condescends to anyone.

This is almost undoubtedly Baumbach’s best directorial effort so far, feeling more focused than The Squid and the Whale and more pointed than Margot at the Wedding. But I’ve always felt like there’s been something missing from Baumbach’s films, and Greenberg, while almost there, isn’t much of an exception.

As far as what exactly that something is, I’m not quite sure — maybe it’s an shoulder-shrugging emotional distance that Baumbach (like most of his characters, especially Stiller’s Greenberg) can never really get past, or that his plots can feel reverse-engineered from preconceived setpieces and conversation points.

Whatever the reason, there’s some lack of emotional weight, some at-the-end-of-the-day lack of a reason to watch, that I think would have otherwise placed Greenberg as one of the best movies 2010 has shown us so far.

While some people may argue whether Stiller was a surprising emotional juggernaut or a lifeless pile of meat that killed the movie, the truth is that he was perfectly adequate — he wasn’t a detriment to the movie in any way, but he didn’t really add too much to the character either. While he may be the one who gets all the press for his pretty seamless jump into drama here, Greenberg’s heart and soul really rest with Greta Gerwig. Her performance is honest to the point of seeming improvised, and her Florence would be nowhere near as powerfully human under any but Gerwig’s skilled hands (and, as it stands, Florence is the hands-down best part of Greenberg).

Hopefully, this movie means Gerwig will be one to watch — she has “indie darling” written all over her.

And I suppose, since this is after all a college newspaper, it should be worth noting: Greenberg loses a few major points for clearly having absolutely no understanding of how young people act or think. Greenberg spends a long time in one scene talking about how he doesn’t get these pill-popping, internetting Generation-Y’ers — and, unfortunately, the longer he talks and the more that college student characters chime in with biting youngster sarcasm and requests to blast some Korn (Really, Baumbach? Korn? I get the exaggeration, but — Korn?), the more it seems like Greenberg is just speaking in place of a very confused Baumbach.

But liking Greenberg will really come down to a matter of personal taste. Some will find its blunt presentation of harsh realities beautiful and completely devoid of schmaltz, its mumblecore’d dialogue endearing, its characters fresh and relatable — others will no doubt find Greenberg to be a cynical, pointless pile of self-loathing and self-importance.