A good cozy mystery is a gift to us all, but in the case of “The Thursday Murder Club,” a Netflix film adaptation of Richard Osman’s wildly successful novel of the same name, the gift is wrapped up in a bow so tight it’s strangling the film’s blood supply.

Retirees Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ron (Pierce Brosnan) and Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley) live in Coopers Chase Retirement Village, a former convent repurposed into what looks like the most enviable senior community on the planet. Spacious apartments! Art classes! Llamas!

Once a week, on Thursdays, this team assembles to solve cold case murders for fun because, you see, older people do more than just crochet. When recent arrival Joyce (Celia Imrie) stumbles on their meeting while showing her robotic hedge fund-manager daughter around the place, Elizabeth senses a useful new member (Joyce was a trauma nurse) and invites her to join.

As they look into an unsolved murder from the 1970s, bad news descends: One of the building’s evil co-owners (David Tennant) wants to kick all the residents out and turn their beloved Coopers Chase into luxury flats. Even more bad news: a brand-new murder!

Now The Club members must deploy all the skills acquired throughout their rich, full lifetimes to thwart these evildoers. Ron was a trade unionist, Ibrahim a psychiatrist and Elizabeth has an unexpected past that makes her very good at crime-solving. Joyce, in addition to her nursing expertise, makes excellent cakes.

They join forces with Donna, a local cop (played by Naomi Ackie, who I am delighted to see everywhere these days) who recently relocated from the Big Bad City and is trying to make headway in her small-town police station.

Everyone in this movie is excellent: The leads, absolutely, but also Daniel Mays as Donna’s bumbling detective colleague, Tom Ellis as Ron’s boxer son, Jonathan Pryce as Elizabeth’s husband and Richard E. Grant as someone whose identity I won’t give away. Truly, it’s aces all the way down.

And it needs to be because the screenplay, by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote, is pretty weak tea.

The characters, in particular, are so broadly drawn that this feels at times like a children’s movie. Or perhaps that’s because it’s directed by Chris Columbus, famous purveyor of kids' fare (“Home Alone,” the first two "Harry Potter" movies, “The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two”) with some schmaltzy all-ages work thrown in (“Nine Months,” “Stepmom,” “Bicentennial Man” — a movie I once watched with friends because, as the friend who dared us to put it, it’s so bad it’s “an endurance test”).

So I don’t know why I was surprised when twinkly music underlined any emotional pivot, bald exposition came fast and furious, actors gazed long and meaningfully at clues or a secret recording was magically rewound and cued up to exactly the right place, on the spot.

Despite all the murders, there’s very little evil present in this story, and what evil does exist is of the silly, mustache-twirling variety. (Tennant, in particular, is so very, very good when he’s being awful.)

In the end, once The Club has unraveled all of this mystery’s many (conveniently and coincidentally) interwoven threads, the conclusion seems to be edging toward nuance — then immediately changes course, plopping us back into a happily-ever-after predicated on black-and-white thinking about right and wrong.

As a way of inspiring the next generation of cozy-mystery lovers, “The Thursday Murder Club” may be a rousing success.

But as a fervent consumer of mysteries and someone over the age of 10, my response was frustration that stems largely from disappointment. The satisfaction of a cozy mystery doesn’t always come exclusively from a complex puzzle solved; it also comes from justice done and, ideally, comeuppance savored. Despite being beautifully made, this tepid, moralizing story denies us any of those pleasures. Rude.

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'THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB'

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violent content/bloody images, strong language and some sexual references)

Running time: 1:58

How to watch: On Netflix Aug. 28

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