In “The Final Cut,” Robin Williams plays a futuristic undertaker who retrieves memories from dead people and edits the ‘‘footage’’ into groping, sentimental drivel that he screens at funerals.

What an ironic turn of events. Just a few years ago, Williams himself was starring in groping, sentimental drivel. I'm thinking specifically of ‘‘Patch Adams,’’ the sickly-sweet box office dud that launched the one-time funnyman into a remedial orbit of bleak, sinister roles in such films as ‘‘One Hour Photo,’’ ‘‘Insomnia’’ and now, ‘‘The Final Cut.’’

If Williams is looking for atonement, he might have to look elsewhere. Bloated with half-formed characters and ideas, ‘‘The Final Cut’’ is a handsome yet meandering piece of pathos-ridden futurism that feels both derivative and largely irrelevant — Philip K. Dick without the thrilling twists and keen social critique.

As professional life-splicer Alan Hakman, Williams reprises his new specialty: the fussy, eccentric loner with voyeuristic tendencies. Forever haunted by a painful childhood secret, Hakman goes about his work as a ‘‘cutter’’ with a thin, brittle smile and little emotion.

Collecting a brainful of digitally- transferred memories from a device called a ‘‘Zoe implant’’ (one in every 20 people in the not-so-distant future has them), Hakman provides his clients with a concise, tastefully scored post-mortem film of their loved ones' time on Earth, from cradle to the grave. All the embarrassing, violent and demeaning bits are left on the virtual cutting room floor, naturally.

Ramrod-straight, dressed in mourner's black, Hakman looks every bit the undertaker — an effect made even more pronounced by his oak- paneled editing computer, which he cradles in his arm like a funeral ledger. Though he refuses to admit it, Hakman sometimes functions as an instrument of denial, preserving a fantasy illusion of normalcy and virtue for troubled families. He erases adulterous affairs and beatings, lies and conspiracies, and — in his latest and most high-profile job — child abuse by a powerful Zoe attorney.

Writer-director Omar Naim has an interesting premise and some novel ideas at his disposal, but — how to put this gently? — it's all just a little too kooky. Ultimately, Hakman is hassled by anti-Zoe technophobes (led by a bitter, bearded Jim Caviezel) who want the lawyer's footage. Later, he discovers something about his past that violates his profession's Three Laws of the Cutter — an obvious and lazy rip-off of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Simply put, the intrigue in ‘‘The Final Cut’’ just isn't all that intriguing.

Neither does Naim prove particularly adept at integrating characters and themes into the body of his story. Mira Sorvino (‘‘Mighty Aphrodite’’) has the ultimate non-role as Hakman's inexplicably attractive off-and-on girlfriend; she literally does nothing except freak out at the most dramatically advantageous moment.

And though the issue of privacy is topical in today's world, Naim stretches the controversy a bit far. A radical political movement against funeral films? Kooky.

At least ‘‘The Final Cut’’ looks good. Gorgeously lit by cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (‘‘Silence of the Lambs’’), the action unfolds in a moody, neo-classic future reminiscent of ‘‘Gattaca’’ and ‘‘Code 46.’’

There's also a nifty special effect that Naim uses to convey the fortune of experiences and images accumulated over a lifetime; a fortune so vast, you need a freaky wooden computer to sort it all out.