Never mind the fact that these are two different things, that relating to only people who are likeable is a pretty vain and self-centered and self-deluded thing. I don’t even know where to begin with the contention that only likeable characters are interesting. This would basically go against a thousand-year history of tragic storytelling, where a main character’s flaws lead to his demise, or even a more recent rich history of anti-hero narratives. If you only want to concern yourself with nice people you’ll get exposure to approximately 3% of humanity. Have fun with that.
The idea of relating to a character is a tough one though. I think what people usually mean when they say this is that they couldn’t find anything particularly interesting about a character, which can be perfectly fine. But I think it speaks to a general lack of curiosity if a person is only interested in characters they think are like them or the people they know. One of the great values of movies is that they can expose us to people and worlds we never get to experience in real life, albeit a tiniest taste of the real thing. It’s often better when you can’t relate to the environment or characters at all, and get to learn a thing or two that you weren’t aware of previously.
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