It’s hard not to watch Joe Bell and see it as another movie where Mark Wahlberg makes it all about him. I mean, his character’s name is the title, for Chrissakes.

Wahlberg has spent most of the aughts starring in fact-based films (usually directed by frequent-partner-in-crime Peter Berg) as the resident hero, the one who’s been through hell and back and should get all the flowers for his hard work and sacrifice.

This is yet another based-on-a-true-story film (which premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival) where Wahlberg goes through emotional and physical hell. He plays the man who went on a “forgiveness walk” from his La Grange, Oregon homestead to New York City, to raise awareness about bullying. Dude literally spent six months rolling his gear through highways, stopping at school assemblies along the way to remind teens that picking on others who are different is not cool.

He does this for his teenage son Jadin (Reid Miller), an out-and-proud lad who unfortunately had to deal with taunts, insults, and worse from male classmates. We see in flashbacks how Joe reluctantly tried to support his kid, giving him the OK to be in the cheerleading squad — but only if he rehearsed in the cheers on the backyard instead of on the front lawn. (Because of, you know, the neighbors!) Jadin also accompanies Joe on this trek, as they surprisingly bond over Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and cook up asparagus that they find growing on the side of the road.

If you know the story of both Jadin and Joe Bell, then you know how tragic this gets. But, even if you don’t, you’ll most likely know how this plays out the minute you first see Wahlberg and Miller on the road, trying not to get flattened by eighteen-wheelers. Drearily shot by Monsters and Men director Reinaldo Marcus Green (who took over directing duties from Cary Joji Fukunaga, who still holds a producer credit), Bell is predictably woeful. The late author Larry McMurtry and his screenwriting partner Diana Ossana were called on to write the script, since they already tackled gay men going through hardships in rural areas (and won Oscars for it) with their adaptation of Brokeback Mountain.

Even though the filmmakers give us a nauseating moment or two of Jadin taking verbal and physical abuse, this ain’t about the kid (even though Miller does a superb job playing a mature teen trying to stay strong in a hateful environment). It’s about his old man, who really isn’t that appealing or compelling a character. Wahlberg works his working-class magic— he once again dons a scraggly, struggle beard that doesn’t connect— to get us to sympathize with someone who doesn’t seem all that dedicated and determined in his cause. When his wife (Connie Britton, once again in wine-swigging, keeping-it-together mom mode) and younger son (Maxwell Jenkins) come to visit, he seems more concerned with watching footage of the boy’s wrestling matches than telling them about his travels. Nevertheless, he marches on, briefly touching lives here and there, whether it’s some people at a gay bar — including a Dolly Parton impersonator — or a lawman (a very welcome Gary Sinise) who also had some issues to work on when his son came out.

Bell is a more maudlin facsimile of movies like Into the Wild and Wild, fellow fact-based films about lost, tormented souls who go on lonesome journeys looking for peace, self-discovery, etc. (Green even got Jacques Jouffret, who was a camera operator for Into the Wild — and who worked on various Wahlberg films — to do the cinematography.) The movie was originally titled Good Joe Bell, but Wild Joe Bell would’ve been a more apropos title.

If anything, it appears Joe Bell, much like that Justin Timberlake movie Palmer on Apple TV+, is out here trying to convince all the blue-collar dads in middle America with gay kids to stop being emotionally stunted assholes and tell your kids you love them no matter what. As drab and formulaic as this film is, you can’t fault it for that.