You can’t handle the truth?

Actually, the core problem of “A Few Good Men,” Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 play that’s been ceremonially trotted out at Lincoln Center, is that we can handle the truth for a whole two and a half hours. The truth is revealed early on, we acknowledge its extreme predictability and then said truth is repeatedly discussed by the adjectives — sorry, the characters — all night long.

Such is this musty old courtroom drama that resembles a million others with its chatty windbags and zero surprises. This is Sorkin at his most oom-pah-pah, earning cheap applause breaks for self-important lines delivered like asteroid impacts.

Director Michael Arden’s ginormous revival has a few good sequences and a few good performances, but “A Few Good Men,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, has never really been a good play.

Of course, there are people who love a bunch of cliche “objection!”s and Sorkin’s portentous dialogue in which every character sounds the same — like the Minions did their undergrad at Stanford. The film version of “A Few Good Men” was a Best Picture Oscar nominee, and is fondly remembered for Jack Nicholson’s performance as bigfooting Colonel Nathan Jessup.

Here the fatigues are donned by Bradley Whitford, Josh from Sorkin’s “The West Wing,” who is one of the production’s pluses. The imposing Whitford innately understands the writer’s pace, smart-aleck humor and curious knack for crafting jackasses, as well he should.

Looking like Lorne Michaels went to boot camp, the actor is strong and compelling despite Sorkin turning the Marine officers (John Zdrojeski and Thom Sesma are the others) into “Muwhaha!” villains with no discernible human qualities. If Whitford’s Guantanamo Bay scenes sound like they’re from “Avatar,” that makes sense. The original actor to play this role, Stephen Lang, went on to play Col. Quaritch in those blue alien movies.  

At Guantanamo, Jessup commands two Marines, Louden Downey (Collin Kelly-Sordelet) and Harold Dawson (Lavel Schley making a sensational Broadway debut), who are on trial for the murder of Private William Santiago. The duo tied the man up and stuffed a cloth in his mouth, which turned out to be poisoned. But the dirty secret is that the crime was a “code red,” an off-the-books hazing-like punishment that’s an acceptable practice at the base. They claim they were ordered to do it.

So the thrust of the show is exposing that conspiracy while indicting the military’s unshakable hierarchy and secretive culture. There is not a single millisecond when you don’t know exactly where the story is headed, and boy does it take its sweet time getting there.

The accused men are assigned a lawyer, Navy Lt. Daniel Kaffee. Cocky and improvisational, he’s inexperienced and hardly their best option, the same of which could unfortunately be said about the actor who plays him, Tom Blyth.

The 31-year-old Brit is known for films like “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” and “People We Meet On Vacation.” He’s swell in those, a heartthrob type, and onstage he has natural charisma. But this is simply not a Broadway caliber performance. He’s uncomfortably hesitant and absent of any smoothness, as though he were a trainee subway train conductor. He jarringly tacks on peculiar jokiness to force an eccentricity that isn’t there. Blyth frankly seems underrehearsed, particularly in the second act trial scene, in which much of the cast was line-flubbing with abandon the night before opening.

Kaffee describes himself and his two sidekicks as “a pushy broad, a smart Jew and a Harvard mouth,” and that’s really about as deep as this thing gets.

As his legal cohort Lt. Joanne Galloway — the brains of the operation until she randomly isn’t — Krysta Rodriguez is plenty prepared, but there’s an artificiality and stiffness to everything she does that would be more at home in a musical or a sit-com. Frazzed and unserious, she could almost be on “Ally McBeal.” Sorkin is equally responsible for this, but Joanne never comes across as capable or intelligent. She’s just a typical 1980s bucket of neuroses. Sorkin likes to combat sexism while also being kinda sexist.

Rounding out the trio, Nick Blaemire is perfectly fine as their funny third wheel, Lt. Sam Weinberg, only it’s never clear why he’s there. Even Sam is stumped. He brings up his apparent superfluousness multiple times.

Speaking of superfluousness, this is a humongous show. There is a cast of 21 actors — the same size as the musical “MJ” — and gifted designer Dane Laffrey of “The Lost Boys” and “Maybe Happy Ending” has turned the Vivian Beaumont into a cavernous airplane hangar.

At times the scale is exciting, particularly during movement choreographer Ricky Ubeda’s entrancing military rituals. But when it’s just three underdog lawyers in a small room trying to nail their defense strategy or during a meat-and-potatoes courtroom scene, the intensity floats up to the rafters.

That is, until the energizing Whitford arrives at that famous speech and line: “You can’t handle the truth!”.

But by then we’ve handled quite enough, thank you.