Julie Taymor’s “Gloria” is an adaptation of Gloria Steinem’s “My Life on the Road.” It premieres Wednesday on Amazon Prime Video.

You can’t argue Gloria Steinem didn’t do a lot in propelling the women’s movement to dizzying heights. And it’s because of those myriad contributions that Julie Taymor finds herself in over her head by foolishly attempting to cram it all into one 147-minute biopic, “The Glorias.” As if that wasn’t already a monumental task, the Tony-winning director and her co-scribe, Sarah Ruhl, quadruple their folly by giving us not just one Gloria, but four, each representing various stages in Steinem’s eventful life. And for some odd reason, they spend a solid chunk of the runtime riding on buses and trains.

Is it a bumpy ride? You bet, but it didn’t need to be this exhausting, as Taymor and Ruhl — Broadway veterans both — stumble and bumble in attempting to encapsulate Steinem’s sprawling memoir, “My Life on the Road.” It’s that rare case where the destination — the end credits — is vastly more rewarding than the journey. And whereas Steinem preferred the road less traveled, Taymor and Ruhl traverse all too-familiar routes in giving us the equivalent of a music star’s career-spanning greatest hits.

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Look, there’s Gloria on her sojourn to India while on fellowship! Oh, and is that her scantily dressed in a New York City Playboy Club doing research for her acclaimed anti-sweatshop article, “A Bunny’s Tale,” for Show magazine? See, she’s leading a women’s march and organizing 1977’s controversial Conference on Women’s Rights. And let’s not forget her marrying Christian Bale’s dad in 2000 on an Oklahoma Reservation with Steinem’s close friend, Wilma Mankiller (Kimberly Guerrero), officiating.

Spectacular re-enactments all, but it’s all surface and without context. Nope, if you want depth, read one of Steinem’s many books. With Taymor, it’s all about the pretty pictures and surreal fantasy sequences featuring all four of our Glorias, played by a couple of kids, Ryan Kiera Armstrong and Lulu Wilson, and adult Oscar-winners Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore. It’s the latter totting much of Taymor’s cloudy water, left to her own considerable devices in trying to lend heft where none exists.

Moore not only proves a dead-ringer for Steinem, but also nails many of her inflections and mannerisms. In fact, she’s so convincing, you need a double take at the very end before you realize who you’re seeing is the real Steinem delivering a blistering speech at 2017’s Women’s March on Washington. Yet, Moore can only do so much, particularly when most of her lines deal in clunky exposition. At least she gets to speak. Vikander must largely be content merely being beautiful, as her twentysomething Gloria observes various misdeeds while staring out the windows of buses and trains, mostly in India. Her lone exception is the aforementioned stretch as a Playboy Bunny, which will rightly hold the long gaze of male viewers.

The two young actresses playing Steinem as a preteen and adolescent fare even worse, taking a backseat to Timothy Hutton’s over-the-top portrayal of Gloria’s irresponsible, get-rich-scheming dad, who after making a prominent presence initially simply gets forgotten once Gloria starts spreading her wings. And that’s not the only instance where characters suddenly pop up and just as quickly disappear in Taymor’s frantic rush to squeeze in every re-enactment. Among those flitting in and out are a perfectly cast Bette Midler as Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Janelle Monáe as Black activist Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Lorraine Toussaint as feminist writer Flo Kennedy, and Monica Sanchez as UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta.

The result is a movie conspicuously missing a clear through-line, and worse, any attempt to get inside Steinem’s head to articulate as to why she sacrificed so much of her life in pursuit of one cause. I assume it’s in her memoir, but it’s not up on screen. What there is to glean is mostly empty and directionless. But all those sets evoking Steinem’s journey from the 1950s up until the present are immaculate.

This is a Taymor production after all. And spectacle is her Broadway trademark. But here it’s just dressing up a void. Ironic, since it was always Steinem’s goal to downplay her exquisite looks to redirect her followers’ eyes away and onto the ultimate prize — equality.