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For the second year in a row, the Sundance Film Festival has pivoted to an all-virtual format to accommodate the ongoing state of the world. This year's festival kicks off with Jesse Eisenberg's directorial debut "When You Finish Saving the World," which the actor also wrote. The movie went into the festival with distribution (A24 will release the film later this year) as opposed to last year's curtain raiser "CODA," which was sold in a massive deal after its opening night debut (and is currently performing well on the awards circuit).

It's always interesting when longtime actors decide to transition to behind the camera. Eisenberg has established himself as an actor who can switch between comedy and drama, mastering a deadpan wit in both genres. He clearly waited until he was ready to make a film on his own terms, and having sole writing and directing credit signals that "When You Finish Saving the World" was a story he was ready to tell. The perplexing issue with the movie is that there's no understanding as to why.

Julianne Moore stars as Evelyn, who is very dedicated to the shelter she manages. At home she lives with her husband (Jay O. Sanders) and her teenage son Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard), who is about as angsty as a teenager could be. He spends time livestreaming his music for his 20,000 followers (he rarely misses an opportunity to throw this number around) and makes money from his online persona. He's not very kind to his parents, who somehow put up with his vulgar aggression against them.

Ziggy's entire life centers around his music, but like any teenager, he is trying to discover the world around him and how he fits into it. He never really wants to have a conversation with his mother, let alone seek her advice, but one day he asks her if she thinks he could be political. Taken aback, Evelyn wonders where this is coming from. Ziggy is trying to impress Lila (Alisha Boe), a girl at school who spends time with other students discussing climate change and human rights.

"When You Finish Saving the World," at its core, is about a mother and son who are going through a similar moment in life, but refuse to do so together. It doesn't help that Ziggy is consistently resistant to spending any meaningful time with his mother, so she tries to help Kyle (Billy Bryk), who lives with his mother at the shelter, to get into college and forge a more hopeful path for his post-high school career.

There are several moments in Eisenberg's 88-minute film where it's clear that he has some larger ideas on his mind, but the movie comes down to a son and mother trying to find connection. They might not always know that they are trying to find it with each other, so they just continually pass each other by and continue to co-exist. Everything surrounding the central relationship feels superfluous to the movie's scarce runtime.

Individual moments or lines in "When You Finish Saving the World" pop with a glimmer of Eisenberg's wry humor, but the movie feels like a skeleton. There's no momentum to the story, and each scenario the characters put themselves in feels perplexing as an audience member. There's never a persuasive moment to convince us that we should be emotionally invested in these characters. It's just a shame that Eisenberg didn't finesse his screenplay to capture those small moments that shine in a bigger way.