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Comparable in many ways to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Babel,” the pic intercuts three stories, set variously in the U.S., the Philippines and Thailand, each involving working parents who regret they can’t spend more time with their offspring. However, the shallow, mega-wealthy, entitled American characters can afford top-of-the-line replacement child care in their deluxe Soho loft, in contrast to single-mother protags such as the Filipino nanny and the Thai sex worker, who struggle far from home to build a better life for their loved ones.

In what is probably its biggest mistake in terms of creating audience identification and emotional involvement, the pic posits a mostly unsympathetic New York couple as its central characters. Restless emergency-room surgeon Ellen (Michelle Williams) and bored millionaire Internet game designer Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal) are mostly absentee parents to cheerful 7-year-old Jackie (Sophie Nyweide). But Jackie is cared for around the clock by loving, live-in Filipino caregiver Gloria (glowing Marife Necesito).

Jackie is fond of her nanny, and so Gloria must contend with Ellen’s obvious jealousy as well as the guilt trips laid on by her young sons, Salvador (Jan Nicdao), 10, and Manuel (Martin Delos Santos), 7, whose plaintive phone calls from Manila reduce her to tears. One of the pic’s strongest sections involves Gloria’s mother (Maria del Carmen) showing Salvador his life isn’t so tough, unwittingly precipitating a disaster that brings Gloria home sooner than planned.

When Leo travels to Thailand (on a private jet, natch) with sleazy business partner Bob (“The Visitor” helmer Tom McCarthy), he meets the pic’s third working mother, sexy bargirl Cookie (gorgeous Run Srinikornchot), whose energy lights up the screen. However, the Thai scenes further the feeling that Garcia Bernal’s idiot-savant character comes from some completely different movie.

One of the main ideas running through Mammoth is the care of children. Ellen and Leo’s nanny has left her own sons in the Philippines to care for a stranger’s daughter in New York. We watch with impending doom as her two young children wander their home country trying to make money so mommy won’t have to work anymore. Sadly, this is easily the weakest section of the film, as tragedy feels inevitable or else the commentary on how wealthy people pay the poor to essentially leave their own children wouldn’t resonate. The intended emotional impact of the Filipino third of the film feels manipulative.

Luckily, the action in New York and Thailand, strengthened by spectacular performances from Bernal and Williams, is strong enough to carry the film. Bernal completely sells a man unsure of his new lot in life. He’s just an over-sized kid with a big heart and he’d rather sit in a bungalow on a beach than a fancy hotel. Williams and Necesito have a fantastic interplay in the New York scenes. All three of these central characters feel completely genuine. I just wish the children didn’t feel so much like plot devices and were more completely developed.

Moodysson has made an ambitious film that would have been better if it didn’t wear those ambitions on its sleeve quite so prominently. It runs longer than it needs to and the final act gets a bit too melodramatic. I loved the little things like the interplay between Bernal and Srinikornichot and Williams and Necesito, but the “big things” felt like a filmmaker who bit off more than he could, or needed to, chew. Mammoth falls a bit short of perfection, but the great performances, interesting themes, and stellar production value (Moodysson’s use of music and the cinematography are top notch) make it worth a look

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