Liberal Arts

I was initially hostile to Liberal Arts, a 2012 film by Josh Radnor, but it made some interesting plot choices that elevated it to okay. But I can't really recommend it.

I saw this film because it stars Elizabeth Olsen, and she's terrific as a precocious 19-year-old, but the film is really about the character played by Radnor, a 35-year-old college admissions executive. I did not know, until seconds ago, that Radnor is the star of a popular TV show--How I Met Your Mother (I've never seen a minute of it). Here he miscalculated by starring in the film he wrote and directed. Perhaps his appearance in the film was key to financing, but it's a mistake.

Radnor plays Jesse, who we are led to believe is having a bad stretch--in the opening minutes his laundry is stolen and he is breaking up with a woman. His old college professor (the always great Richard Jenkins) is retiring, so Radnor shows up to attend his testimonial dinner. While there, he meets Olsen, the daughter of Jenkins' friends.

The film's fulcrum is on how these two come together, and Radnor is certainly conscious of how icky it all could be. The number of films, plays, and novels about older men and younger women are legion and its almost impossible to do it anymore without being A) a cliche, and/or B) an old man's fantasy come to life. Radnor, to his credit, handles it with kid gloves, first by making Olsen the aggressor, and very mature. He also makes it a non-authority figure relationship--he's not her teacher, she's not his student. They court by letter (she insists he writes her using pen and paper) and the relationship seems to be based on solid ground.

Where it doesn't work is by making Radnor almost completely the seduced. He has a puppy-dog look that just doesn't fit the material. I would have liked someone with more of an edge, someone more dangerous, that perhaps Olsen would have responded to out of something carnal rather than their shared love of Cosi Fan Tutte.

I don't want to spoil the film, but it doesn't end up where a lot of these stories do, which I appreciated. Radnor gives his character one really bad trait--literary snobbism. He finds a copy of Twilight in Olsen's room and he can't believe it. He then reads the book and chides her for wasting her time. A guy who doesn't understand the principle of the guilty pleasure must really be a drag.

The film's subplots are interesting. Jenkins' character has an arc that he has retired too soon, and Allison Janney has a small role as a professor of British Romanticism. John Magaro is a troubled student whom Radnor takes an interest in--they both value David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (though the book title, like Twilight, is not said aloud, the cover is identifiable).

The script is literate, the acting is good, and I liked a film that essentially celebrates the liberal arts college (it was filmed at Radnor's alma mater, Kenyon College). But ultimately the character Radnor played was just too much of a Boy Scout to make things interesting. A nice effort, though.