{"id":31290,"date":"2012-09-14T09:30:57","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T16:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=31290"},"modified":"2012-09-14T09:39:24","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T16:39:24","slug":"rethink-reviews-liberal-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2012\/09\/14\/rethink-reviews-liberal-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"ReThink Reviews &#8211; &#8220;Liberal Arts&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/archive.org\/download\/DailyDigest091412\/2012_09_14_kim.mp3\">Listen to this segment&lt;br \/&gt;\n<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n<p><a href =\"http:\/\/www.rethinkreviews.net\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=right width=55% src=\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\" alt=\"Rethink Reviews\" \/><\/a><strong>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p><em>Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em>  <\/p>\n<p> Read his reviews online at <a href=\"http:\/\/ReThinkReviews.net\">ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim\">www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews\">twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews&#8217; theme song is by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/restaurantmusic\">Restavrant<\/a>.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>Liberal Arts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2018LIBERAL ARTS\u2019<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an accepted but horrible clich\u00e9 in movies \u2014 the older guy with a much younger woman \u2014 which probably springs from the fact that it\u2019s an attractive idea to the older male studio executives who greenlight most films. But in the new indie film \u2018Liberal Arts\u2019 from writer\/director\/star Josh Radnor, we find something refreshing \u2014 a man in his mid-thirties who finds himself in a moral and ethical quandary over a mutual crush on a precocious college sophomore who attends his alma-mater.<\/p>\n<p>Radnor plays 35-year-old Jesse, who works in the admissions department of a New York college. To celebrate the retirement of Professor Hoberg, his favorite college professor (played by Richard Jenkins), Jesse returns to the idyllic Ohio college where he spent his happiest years falling in love with literature. There, Jesse meets Zibby (played by Elizabeth Olsen), the fresh-faced 19-year-old daughter of some of Professor Hoberg\u2019s friends. There\u2019s an immediate chemistry between the two, which deepens via a series of handwritten letters after Jesse returns to New York as Zibby introduces Jesse to a mix CD of classical music she made for him while Jesse advises her on the best books to read while advising her on the post-college world she\u2019ll face.<\/p>\n<p>Against his better judgment, Jesse returns to his school to see Zibby and hopefully recreate the carefree, intellectually stimulating years of his youth before the realities of the real world wore him down. But through his interactions with a troubled student (played by John Magaro), a former literature professor Jesse had a crush on (played by Allison Janney), and the realities of the sixteen-year age difference between he and Zibby, it becomes clear that being on campus and a college-age girlfriend won\u2019t change the person he\u2019s become since graduation. But through conversations with a hippyish student (played by Zac Effron), Jesse also learns that there are aspects of his college mindset that he can and should protect from the creeping cynicism of adulthood.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Liberal Arts\u2019 is Radnor\u2019s second film after the decent but underperforming \u2018Happythankyoumoreplease\u2019, where the characters\u2019 habit of earnestly and over-eloquently saying exactly what they were thinking at all times definitely made it feel like a first film. In contrast, \u2018Liberal Arts\u2019 feels more mature and real, which is helped by great performances by Jenkins, Janney, and especially Olsen, who perfectly evokes the enthusiasm of a smart girl who wants to grow up fast but refuses to condemn the guilty pleasures of her own generation, like the vampire romance novels that make Jesse\u2019s moral, intellectual, and literary sensibilities curdle.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past decade or so, American comedies have been overrun by juvenile man-boys who refuse to grow up. But recently, I\u2019ve detected a welcome variation of this in still-funny but more thoughtful films like \u2018Liberal Arts\u2019 and Mike Birbiglia\u2019s semi-autobiographical film, Sleepwalk With Me, where both films have men who don\u2019t want to grow up, but know they have to in a world where the role of the adult man is largely undefined. In previous generations, when people married early and gender roles were more defined, things were more clear-cut since men were usually the sole breadwinner, and being a man meant getting a job that put food on the table for their families. But these days, with men and women both earning paychecks, conventions that used to thrust people into adulthood relatively early no longer apply.<\/p>\n<p>At one point in \u2018Liberal Arts\u2019 , Professor Hoburg says, \u201cNobody feels like an adult. That\u2019s the world\u2019s dirty secret.\u201d \u2018Liberal Arts\u2019 doesn\u2019t purport to know the answer to what it means to be an adult in the 21st century, but it gently yet firmly makes one thing clear \u2014 regressing, no matter how attractive and comforting it seems, especially with an exciting person nearly half your age, isn\u2019t a realistic option. And I\u2019m hoping there are more to come in this burgeoning wave of movies that say that while it can be momentarily amusing, it\u2019s time for the man-boys to grow up. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018Liberal Arts\u2019 is rated PG-13 and opens today in select theaters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}