If Britney’s book seemed flat, imagine the movie

There’s nothing brave or new about “Brave New Girl,” an original ABC Family movie based on a novel by Britney and Lynne (Britney’s mom!) Spears, though it does pretty adequately reflect the kind of self-helpy, Hallmarkian dystopia we live in. You know the culture is on its last legs when expensively educated people decide that Britney Spears’ literary oeuvre needs to be adapted for TV.

Based on the “just be yourself”-themed teen novel, “A Mother’s Gift,” which Britney and her mom pooled their gifts to create in 2001, “Brave New Girl” tells the story of Holly, a musically gifted but cash-strapped teen whose dreams of attending a classical music conservatory sustain her through long, dull shifts at the local Dairy Princess.

(The Dairy Princess is a fictional fast-food establishment that represents the Spearses’ mere et fille nervousness surrounding issues of trademark infringement and which, presumably, avoids putting viewers in the difficult position of having to imagine a drive-through establishment that serves lactose-rich products and yet doesn’t reference royalty.)

In the book, Holly’s mom, Wanda, is a loving, self-sacrificing single mom with an embarrassing Gorby-like disfigurement on her face. And the uptight classical music conservatory that eventually learns to let down its bun and let Holly be the twangy, untrained, Britney-loving pop singer she is happens to be just down the road in their Mississippi town. (The movie puts their home in Texas, as Mississippi could be considered too obscure for some viewers.)

Peachy blond Lindsey Haun (daughter of Air Supply guitarist Jimmy Haun) plays Holly as a sweet-tempered dreamer whose social and career ambitions only occasionally clutter her brow. Virginia Madsen plays Wanda with all the plucky self-sacrifice and none of the discomfiting unsightliness of the book’s Wanda. The musical conservatory is called Haverty and has been relocated north of the Mason-Dixon line to the home of the cheese steak.

Snooty Philadelphia doesn’t take to brave new girls like Holly and Wanda quite in the way they hoped it would. A venerable, Juilliard-like conservatory, Haverty appears to have a faculty and staff made up of only about four people -- the cute professor who lets Holly in on the basis of her Dairy Princess rendition of “Yellow Rose of Texas,” the cute professor who wants to date her mom, the uncute professor who sneers a lot and the uptight, wool-swathed lady professor who despises Holly on sight, partly because she can’t tell a dissonant note from a consonant one, partly because she’s scuffing the floors.

Needless to say, Haverty is not what Holly expected. Though she does find an instant friend in her poor-little-alcoholic-rich-girl roommate, Ditz (Jackie Rosenbaum), and an immediate admirer in the rich but scruffy son of a big producer, Grant (Nick Roth), she also inexplicably gains an instantaneous rival in the gifted, extremely well-educated daughter of a famous soprano, Angela (Barbara Mamabolo).

Like most gifted, well-educated people -- indeed like her professors -- Angela cannot stop sneering. She can barely sing for the sneering, in fact. She is also deeply threatened by Holly, whom she suspects is somehow the better, more talented person.

One night Angela digs up Holly’s embarrassing audition tape and plays it for all the kids. Of all the things this plucky girl had ever faced -- and there have been many tribulations along the way: the bank forecloses on the house in Texas, Wanda’s car dies before she can get out of Philadelphia, Wanda gets a job as a waitress at the local hangout, Wanda moves into, uh muh guhd, Holly’s dorm room -- this is by far the worst.

You don’t have to be an ostracized voice major to know what it’s like for kids in our society who can’t pronounce Berlioz. Pop music lover? “American Idol” fan? Why, you can scarcely leave your room without some spinster in a bun getting all up in your face about the “right” way to sing Bizet or without some insane opera major practically jumping you. It’s a highbrow inferno, this world we live in.

Which is what makes “Brave New Girl’s” triumphant finale ultimately so satisfying. After nailing a selection from “Carmen” -- the story, by the way, of a revolutionary gypsy, while Wanda works at a cafe called “Gypsy,” whoa -- Holly amazes the assemblage of academics and music geeks by busting into a reinterpreted pop version of the song.

It’s a true “Flashdance” moment, and although Holly mostly stays off the floor and professor Dominatrix keeps her bun on, a lesson is learned by all.

Actually, several lessons. Roughly, they are: (1) Be yourself. (2) Don’t let a little lack of education get in the way of your dreams. (3) Love is all there is. (4) Everybody’s scared. (5) If you love someone, set them free (or, it’s OK to dump your hick boyfriend for someone better). And, finally: (6) Never, ever kid yourself into thinking that a movie based on a book written by Britney-and-her-mom-Spears is going to be anything but painful. They can’t all be “Showgirls.”

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‘Brave New Girl’

Where: ABC Family

When: 8 to 10 p.m. Sunday

Lindsey Haun...Holly

Virginia Madsen...Wanda

Jackie Rosenbaum...Ditz

Barbara Mamabolo...Angela

Executive producers, Britney Spears, Lynne Spears, Rob Lee. Director, Bobby Roth. Writer, Amy Talkington.