Usually embodied by performers at least a decade older than the characters they’re portraying, Broadway’s swelling throng of anguished adolescents onstage may all share a common grudge against life (and more often than not a basic plotline). But they mercifully have different ways of expressing their grievances, in shows as different as the sophisticated, brooding “Dear Evan Hansen,” the smart-mouthed “Mean Girls” and the big-hearted “The Prom.”

Now, after selling out its limited run off-Broadway last summer, the rabidly eager “Be More Chill,” which opened Sunday at the Lyceum Theater, has joined the crowded field of shows about hormonally overcharged outsiders longing for acceptance. While its characters, inevitably, learn that being popular isn’t everything, the show’s investors would no doubt beg to differ.

Adapted by Joe Iconis (songs) and Joe Tracz (book) from Ned Vizzini’s appealing young adult novel, “Be More Chill” has already broken the Lyceum house record for a single week of ticket sales. If it sustains that momentum, it will be partly because this latest entry in the puberty musical sweepstakes has traits that undeniably set it apart from its competition.

For one thing, it is — by cold critical standards — the worst of the lot, with a repetitive score, painfully forced rhymes, cartoonish acting and a general approach that mistakes decibel level (literally and metaphorically) for emotional intensity. But this ostensible amateurishness may be exactly what sells “Be More Chill” to its young target audience.

Alone among Broadway musicals, “Be More Chill” feels as if it could have been created by the teenagers it portrays, or perhaps by even younger people imagining what high school will be like. Though its production values have been souped up since I saw it in August, the show’s current incarnation — which features the same cast and is again directed by Stephen Brackett — remains a festival of klutziness that you could imagine being put together in the bedrooms and basements of young YouTubers.

In fact, it was through social media that “Be More Chill” acquired its ever-expanding fan base after an initial, critically dismissed run at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 2015. The cast recording inspired a staggering number of storyboard art presentations and lip-synced video performances on YouTube and when it opened off-Broadway, its score had been streamed more than 150 million times.

The plot, presented in a droller and less hysterical vein in the novel that inspired it, is a sci-fi variation on the theme of social paranoia that has long ruled teenage entertainment. The nerdy, terminally unhip hero, Jeremy Heere (a self-effacing, sweetly adenoidal Will Roland), is offered a computerized pill, called a Squip, that rewires him to run with the cool crowd. Played by Jason Tam, in the show’s slickest performance, the Squip materializes to Jeremy looking like Keanu Reeves in “The Matrix” and proceeds to dictate his life.

That basic premise recalls the Eisenhower-era horror film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” which suggested that those who rule the status quo are really mindless pod people. At first Jeremy — the anxious son of a single dad (Jason SweetTooth Williams) who mopes around the house in his underwear — is ecstatic just to fit in.

But like the leading characters of “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Mean Girls,” Jeremy learns that popularity comes at a dehumanizing price. His hour of reckoning takes place during a performance of a school play about a zombie apocalypse, during which he wrestles with his bad cyber angel.

He is assisted by his bestie, forever gauche Michael Mell (the highly emotive George Salazar), whom Jeremy had abandoned on the road to social success. He is also inspired by selfless love — for the madcap Christine Canigula (a hyperkinetic Stephanie Hsu).

This all sounds like more fun than it is — at least for anyone over the age of 21. (That’s a generous cutoff point.) The acting, singing and dancing (choreographed by Chase Brock) are all, to put it kindly, frenetic. The set (by Beowulf Boritt), lighting (Tyler Micoleau) costumes (Bobby Frederick Tilley II) and projections (Alex Basco Koch) bring to mind bright fan fiction comic books drawn in fluorescent crayon.

Despite a lively number that brings the “Telephone Hour” scene from “Bye Bye Birdie” into the present (as “The Smartphone Hour,” led by powerhouse Tiffany Mann), the show’s cultural and technological frames of reference aren’t truly of the moment. Much of “Be More Chill” could have been staged in the late 20th century, when the first “Matrix” movie came out, without seeming out of place or even prescient.

But it may be its very lack of chillness that has allowed “Be More Chill” to capture so many young hearts. None of the characters onstage really look like enviably glamorous popular people, but friendly nebbishes imitating the social elite with slapdash satirical broad strokes. The rhymes in Iconis’ lyrics feel like they might have been improvised on the spot by class-cutting stoners behind the gym. (An example from the showstopping “Michael in the Bathroom”: “I’d rather fake pee/Than stand awkwardly.”)

Doubtless much care and calculation has gone into remounting “Be More Chill.” But it still has the goofy karaoke quality of kids performing boisterously for other kids. It doesn’t try to dazzle its audience with glossy professionalism. For better or worse, this may be the only show on Broadway that a tween could see and think happily, “Hey, I could do that at home.”

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Production Notes:

‘Be More Chill’

Tickets: At the Lyceum Theater, Manhattan; 212-239-6200, bemorechillmusical.com. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Credits: Music and lyrics by Joe Iconis; book by Joe Tracz; directed by Stephen Brackett; choreography by Chase Brock; music direction and vocal arrangements by Emily Marshall; music supervision and orchestrations by Charlie Rosen; sets by Beowulf Boritt; costumes by Bobby Frederick Tilley II; lighting by Tyler Micoleau; sound by Ryan Rumery; projections by Alex Basco Koch; wigs and makeup by Dave Bova; fight director, J. David Brimmer; music coordinator, Michael Aarons; dance arrangements by Rob Berman; production stage manager, Amanda Michaels; production supervisor, Senovva; company manager, Daniel Hoyos; general management, LDK Productions and Lisa Dozier King. Presented by Gerald Goehring, Michael F. Mitri, Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Marc David Levine, Marlene and Gary Cohen, 42nd.Club, The Viertel Routh Frankel Baruch Group, Jenny Niederhoffer, Ben Holtzman and Sammy Lopez, Jenn Maley and Cori Stolbun, Joan and Robert Rechnitz, Chris Blasting/Simpson & Longthorne, Koenigsberg/Federman/Adler, YesBroadway Productions, Kumiko Yoshii, Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman, Jay and Cindy Gutterman/Caiola Productions, Phil Kenny/Jim Kierstead, Deroy/Winkler/Batchelder, Jonathan Demar/Kim Vasquez, Brad Blume/Gemini Theatrical Investors LLC, Alisa and Charlie Thorne, Fred and Randi Sternfeld, Connor Tinglum/Andrew Hendrick, Ashlee Latimer and Jenna Ushkowitz and Two River Theater.

Cast: Will Roland, George Salazar, Stephanie Hsu, Gerard Canonico, Katlyn Carlson, Tiffany Mann, Lauren Marcus, Britton Smith and Jason SweetTooth Williams.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.