The Maltz Jupiter Theatre begins the new year just like it ended the old one, with an attractive, well-performed musical production. If only it were lavishing the effort on a show that deserved such attention.

The company, in a co-production with Lancaster, Pa.’s Fulton Theatre, is presenting “Singin’ in the Rain,” a theatrical version of the 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds-Donald O’Connor big screen vehicle about the early days of talkies. It is surely one of the best movie musicals ever made, but that does not mean it can transfer to the stage well with only minimal adaptation.

The show first arrived on Broadway in 1985, an early example of the increasingly frequent trend of using popular films as source material for musicals. But screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green were content to stick to much of the movie’s script rather than tailoring it to the stage.

Are the results entertaining? Absolutely. Is there anything on the Maltz stage that is an improvement over the film? Not remotely. So that leaves the target audience to be those who never saw the movie of “Singin’ in the Rain,” those with only a vague memory of it and those without a Netflix account.

As you undoubtedly already know, “Singin’ in the Rain” is the tale of screen star Don Lockwood (Curt Dale Clark), his former vaudeville song-and-dance partner Cosmo Brown (Brian Shepard), Don’s screechy, dumb blonde co-star Lina Lamont (Emily Stockdale) and his new discovery/romantic interest, Kathy Selden (Lauren Blackman).

When talkies arrive and the newest Lockwood-Lamont silent flick, “The Dueling Cavalier,” is suddenly obsolete, they try to salvage it by turning the movie into a musical, with Kathy dubbing Lina’s dialogue and singing voice.

The story line is certainly sturdy enough, but the show settles for lurching from one familiar movie image to another, interrupted only by that terrific Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed score. There’s the bumpkin verve of “Fit as a Fiddle,” the manic tapping to the tongue-twisting “Moses Supposes,” the sunny optimism of “Good Morning” and the jazzy, all but irrelevant, production number, “Broadway Melody.”

Oh, and a certain splashy title tune. If you are going to the Maltz to see it rain onstage and maybe get a little wet, the production does not disappoint. In director-choreographer Marc Robin’s most interesting touch, the entire show takes place on a sound stage at Monumental Pictures. So when Don dances with abandon at the end of the first act, the deluge comes from an indoor studio water effect. Not only does it pour, but the romantically smitten Clark makes a point of kicking water on the paying customers in the nearest few rows.

Clark sports a gleaming Pepsodent smile and he dances and sings quite well, but he turns his character into too much of a cartoon to have us really care about him. Better is Shepard’s Cosmo, with a nimble comic physicality, and Blackman, a willowy brunette who makes Kathy her own woman. Stockdale settles for a stock blonde stereotype and — spectacle-wearers, beware — her high-pitch, often unintelligible screech really could shatter glass.

Robin imports his designers from Lancaster, and you could hardly fault him when Thomas M. Ryan supplies such witty, oversized sets — including his amusing proscenium arch — and Anthony Lascoskie, Jr.’s costumes are so eye-popping. If only they had been created for a more interesting show than “Singin’ in the Rain.”