The Spears chick flick “Crossroads” isn’t, actually, awful. “Basic Instinct” is awful. “Crash” is awful. And “Crossroads” deserves a Criterion edition compared to the loathsome and pretentious worst movie ever made, “Red Cockroaches.” And for you 18.1 million viewers out there who dig “Grey’s Anatomy”? You can thank the writer and director of the Britney Spears bomb for some of those episodes.

Sure, it’s tepid and no deeper than a Hallmark Channel movie — circumstances align in the perfect way for three former best friends who have drifted apart over the years to go on a cross-country road trip and rediscover their friendship. Friend Kit has become a posh fiancée. Pal Mimi is a pregnant trailer park pariah. Spears, pushed by Dad to be a doctor, is the school’s — don’t laugh — valedictorian. The road-trip conflicts — a cracked radiator! and temptations — a hotel with a mini-bar! are low-grade. The “American Pie” clichés about how leaving high school with your virginity intact are insulting. And 90 percent of the teenagers look and act like 30-year-old Gap managers.

But come on. It’s a Britney Spears product. It’s not quite going for the “Sunset Boulevard” audience. Its failure to live up to that isn’t nearly the most interesting thing about it. Spears’s character Lucy is miserable because of her pressure to be the best. In the end, her dad realizes that she’s missed out on the typical ephemera of teenage life because she’s been working herself ragged and lets her go. Sound familiar?

The most interesting thing about “Crossroads” is what it says about the real Spears and the cynicism of her handlers. Yes, she’s 27 now. But how much responsibility does a 10-year-old have for getting on “Star Search”? Or for keeping those cameras rolling to the extent that the Associated Press writes you an obituary, just in case, when you’re 26? Maybe it occurred to a still semi-innocent 19-year-old Spears to follow in “Lucy’s” footsteps — and telling her sharks to step off. But if it did, it was obviously a decade too late.