directed by James Ponsoldt
and starring Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg

In the seven years since David Foster Wallace’s death, the author’s legend has grown to immense proportions. Known for his dense, hyperactive essays and novels, Wallace has become an archetype of the tortured genius. Like Kurt Cobain, a fellow alternative icon memorialized to the point of exhaustion, Wallace’s humanity has been drained by his adoring legion.

Wallace’s elevated status makes a cinematic depiction of his life a dangerous proposition. While a multi-dimensional portrait could add a fresh perspective to the idol-esque worship that surrounds him, biopics more often tend towards the romantic. Such is the trap that ensnares “The End of the Tour,” which follows Wallace (Jason Segel) and journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) as the latter profiles the final stages of the publicity tour for the former’s most acclaimed novel, “Infinite Jest.”

Based on five days of conversation with Wallace that Lipsky recorded for a Rolling Stone article (the article was shelved, but the conversations were collected in Lipsky’s 2010 book, “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself”), “The End of the Tour” attempts to find the man within Wallace’s outsize myth. But the film’s unchecked reverence for the author only pushes him further from reality.

Like Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy, “The End of the Tour” seeks profundity in casual conversation, which comprises the majority of the film. Aside from a prologue in which Lipsky learns of Wallace’s death 12 years after the interview, the film rarely breaks from the duo’s intellectual courtship.

But where Linklater’s trilogy allowed its characters to reveal themselves slowly and spontaneously, Lipsky and Wallace arrive as static entities: Wallace the fame-averse, artistic enigma; Lipsky a mellowed variation on the motor-mouthed brainiacs Eisenberg frequently plays. Everything you need to know about the duo becomes clear in the film’s first act; the rest is spent spinning their wheels.

The film plays more like a recitation than an interrogation, allowing the duo to construct worldviews, but rarely prodding at them. At one point, Wallace explains his fanboy crush on Alanis Morissette, who he deems, “pretty in a very sloppy, very human way.” Director James Ponsoldt and screenwriter Donald Margulies strive for a similarly unassuming beauty, but they fail to create an effective foil for Wallace’s idiosyncrasies. Though friction arises between him and Lipsky, it lacks the wit and personal dimension that colors their offhand banter.

Adept at playing vulnerable everymen, Segel struggles when tasked with imitating an exceptional intellect. In the grand tradition of against-type Oscar bait, Segel commands his subject’s facial tics and slow, even drawl, but can’t bring life to these performative mechanics. As demonstrated in Judd Apatow productions like “Freaks and Geeks” and “The Five-Year Engagement,” his sensitivity as a performer works best without adornment.

On paper, Segel and Ponsoldt would seem a perfect fit, as Ponsoldt films with a delicacy that aligns with Segel’s instincts. When given the right material, Ponsoldt can facilitate moments of wrenching self-examination, as he did in his previous film, “The Spectacular Now.” Tracing the doomed arc of a high-school romance, the film turned its leads inside out, dissecting their flaws with a force and precision missing here.

Tasked with deflating the legend surrounding David Foster Wallace, “The End of the Tour” achieves the opposite. Loose but never spontaneous, warm but never intimate, the film flattens Wallace into a tidy caricature. An artist as vibrant as Wallace deserves better.