Review of Liberal Arts at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival - Sitcom star Josh Radnor makes bright, shiny comedy with Liberal Arts.
Every week Josh Radnor proves himself to be one of the more likable actors on television via his hit CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother.
More impressive are the storytelling skills he’s displayed as a filmmaker after just two films, his likable and little-seen New York City-set romance happythankyoumoreplease and his even better sophomore effort, the back-to-campus comedy Liberal Arts.
For his second premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, acquired by IFC Films a couple of days after its debut screening, Radnor brings together a top-notch cast including Elizabeth Olsen, Richard Jenkins and Allison Janney. Like Woody Allen, Radnor plays the leading man in his movies (at least so far) and his easygoing performance is a perfect fit for his midlife crisis comedy.
Jesse Fisher (Radnor) is middle age, lonely and fairly ambivalent about his job. So he jumps at the chance to return to his small-town, Midwest alma mater of Kenyon College for a favorite professor’s
(Jenkins) retirement dinner. The trip back to Ohio rejuvenates his zest for life and he ends up in an unlikely romance with a pretty sophomore nicknamed Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen).
Like happythankyoumoreplease, Radnor tells another tale of romantic travails, male angst and the challenge at finding fulfillment in life.
Comparisons to Allen’s comedies are appropriate to Radnor’s comic storytelling and Liberal Arts with its relationship between Fisher and the much younger Zibby brings to mind Allen dating Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan.
Allison Janney makes colorful use of her brief scenes as a favorite literature professor who reconnects with Fisher in a surprising manner.
After her seriously complex performance in last year’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Elizabeth Olsen flashes a lighter, intentionally flighty side as Zibby, a young woman with no cares in the world except for her academic pursuits, and perhaps, the chance of a passionate romance with an older man.
Richard Jenkins brings welcome gravitas to the movie as the retiring professor who discovers he may not be ready to retire after all. Just when the movie starts to float away in a cloud of aw-shucks comedy, Jenkins grounds the story with emotional scenes about measuring one’s life, work and overall creative contributions.
Radnor is at ease in the spotlight, on both sides of the camera, and makes good use of the comic timing he learned in the sitcom trenches.
Radnor shows impressive technical skills thanks in part to returning crewmembers form happythankyoumoreplease including cinematographer Seamus Tierney (Adam, The Narrows) and editor Michael Miller. More importantly, Radnor trusts his instincts when it comes to entertaining audiences.
The Radnor touch makes Liberal Arts a fast-moving, upbeat and consistently likable comedy. Sure, the film’s core couple of Fisher and Zibby invites quick comparisons to Woody Allen’s Manhattan but Radnor does separate his movie from many Allen comedies in a major way. You won’t find any scenes of psychoanalytical contemplation in Liberal Arts. Radnor is too much of a good time filmmaker to even consider such scenes. In a likable, easygoing comedy like Liberal Arts, even middle age angst comes off as shiny, bright and funny.
Distributor: IFC Films
Cast: Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen, Zac Efron, Richard Jenkins, Allison Janney, John Magaro, Elizabeth Reaser
Director: Josh Radnor
Producers: BCDF Pictures
Screenwriter: Josh Radnor
Cinematographer: Seamus Tierney
Editor: Michael R. Miller
Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 95 minutes
Release Date: 2012