Review of Liberal Arts (2012) by Karthik C — 12 Nov 2014

Like Ted Mosby, Josh Radnor has a lot of thoughts about the pursuit of knowledge, the impetus of young love, and the sanctity of the written word. His dialogue rings like poetry, and his main character reminds us of the wistfulness of Holden Caulfield, the indifference of "The Graduate", and the romanticism of a Pablo Neruda poem.

While Radnor wrote and directed very dreamy characters in a realm of stasis that we can all love easily, and grasp at bigger than life issues, there's just something off about this indie darling. We all must have groaned when we learned that the relationship at the crux of the film is between middle aged Radnor and co-ed Zibby (Olsen).

While I believe it was handled with delicacy and thoughtfulness, the trope of the older man being quelled by the "manic pixie dream girl" has been done to death. The side story of the former mentor, played by Richard Jenkins, wasn't quite palatable.

Jenkins' character serves as an antagonistic benchmark against the rest of the characters, but every time we see him deal with the complexities of remorse it was absolutely boring. The ending did have me swoon, but made me wonder what the point of Jesse's journey was? Was the moral that we shouldn't stay in the past, or possibly was it that we should chase our dreams? Radnor tries to argue for both points and in the end doesn't cover either succinctly.

More time on certain relationships and issues would have created a better story.