Amicable at best and monotonous at worst, CODA delivers a heartfelt message on the deaf community but lacks the punch to back it up; the occasional glimmer of serenity few and far between.

An English retelling of 2014’s La Famille Bélie, CODA is an abbreviation commonly used in Deaf communities to refer to those born with their hearing to parents born without. It is a perspective not commonly seen, the drama tending to focus on those with the disability and their metaphorical leaping of their physical hurdle. But Sian Heder’s comedy-drama focuses on the oxymoronic alienation between sensory-privileged daughter and her deaf family, a platonic affair that is filled with heartfelt affection and stereotypic intimacy while never taking the next step into excitement.

Seventeen and a coda, Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the youngest child of the Rossi fishing family. She works on her family’s trawler alongside her brother Leo (Daniel Durant) and father Frank (Troy Kotsur), both unable to hear her sing as she blasts the radio up to 11, the confused fish her only audience. At school, she is an outcast, falling asleep mid-class as her surf-smelling sweatshirt identifies her as every bully’s prime subject, an added addendum to a long list of tormentable offenses. And she doesn’t care. She is comforted by her place within her family of social islands, looking forward to the day she can escape her scholastic career and head towards the ocean.

But her talent for vocals drives a wedge between her and her family. It makes sense – Ruby’s mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin) asking her if the reason she likes music is because her family can’t enjoy it – but Heder stubbornly plants her feet and refuses to move another inch. Little else happens across the two-hour runtime which is the case for most coming-of-age flicks, but Heder incessantly bangs the deaf drum over and over again, refusing to talk about anything but.

There is a love story hidden somewhere between Ruby’s dream to become a singer, but all that ever matters is her relationship with her family, turning CODA into a tunnel-visioned plot that barely looks out of the window as it drives through one repetitive scene to the next. Ruby’s love interest with Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), Ruby’s relationship with her best and only friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth), Ruby’s singing tutorship under the school’s choir director Mr V (Eugenio Derbez); all of these conversations support the greater goal and, in turn, blend together into an unmemorable blur.

Not that these roles aren’t played well, but there is an inherent lack of chemistry between anyone that isn’t part of the Rossi family – pawns to a greater story. And even then, it is a superficial one, their intimacy rarely translating to honesty as my eyes grew watery not from guttural sadness, but from a mandatory participation with the objectively sad tale before me. The moment passes, and it is back to more interactions that all lead to the same ending, unescapable as each path ends at the same expected and obvious climax, a singing audition.

Maybe I am being too tough on this Best Picture-winning flick; maybe it is a question of prior prejudices fuelling my dissatisfaction. And then I look at the other nominees: Licorice Pizza with its morally challenging but devastating coming-of-age love story, Jane Campion’s return with her mesmerising and brutal The Power of the Dog, or Dune’s breath-taking combination between medieval castles and alien vistas. No, CODA is outclassed in every aspect, its Oscar success marring its easy brightness with assumptions for greatness.