The new comedy ‘Post Grad’ can’t even really be construed as a comedy. It tries to be in parts. Well, Michael Keaton tries, but even his best Clark W. Griswold impression can’t save this one from being a stale redux of so many other movies. What the film really is, other than a piggybacker of movies about young adults seeking their place in the world that go all the way back to ‘The Graduate’ and beyond, is a lighthearted depiction of a family. Lighthearted isn’t exactly a genre, though it probably should be. That’s really all this film lives up to be. It’s humor isn’t particularly funny. It’s drama is anything but theatrical.
There are so many elements to the film that go absolutely nowhere, and you wonder if the screenwriter had it in mind to sell this as a pilot for a new TV series. “The Malbeys” it would be called, and it would have everything those lame sitcoms from the ’90s stole from the glorious sitcoms of the ’80s and further back spewed at their audiences week in and week out.
The film opens with graduation day for Ryden Malby, a name I’m sure it took screenwriter Kelly Fremon days to piece together. Ryden, played by Alexis Bledel, has got a loving family, dysfunctional and quirky as it may be. Her father never seems to finish anything he starts. Her grandmother, who lives with the family, is a stubborn, old woman seems to take all her cues of love for her family from “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Her little brother licks people’s heads. That’s enough said about him. Her mother does her best to keep the family in line, but even she has her eccentricities here and there.
Ryden has her whole future planned out. She will graduate from college, get a job with a prestigious publishing house, and discover the great American novel. Of course, things don’t go quite as planned. Ryden doesn’t get the job of her dreams, and, as such, she moves back in with her family all the while trying to get her foot in the door somewhere, anywhere. You thought the whole “male friend who’s in love with the girl but never knows how to express it” went out once John Hughes stopped making movies two decades ago? Think again. He’s here and played with awkward conviction by “Friday Night Lights” star Zach Gilford. The hot guy who lives next door that the girl is infatuated with? Xerxes himself, Rodrigo Santoro, brings this character to life.
In fact, there is nothing in ‘Post Grad’ that brings any sense of freshness or originality to its audience. Every gag, every plot turn, everything about this film is choreographed beyond belief. There is one joke, just one, that doesn’t fall flat on its face. It involves a casket and a group of Latino thugs. The less said about this joke, the better, because if you do decide to see this film, you might want just one surprise in the whole thing. That would be it. Another scene involving Keaton as Ryden’s father telling her what the future holds with one, definitive word might have been more than slightly interesting were it not a complete rehash of the famous “Plastics” scene from ‘The Graduate.’
However, for all of its lazy cinematic thievery, it is hard to out and out hate a film like ‘Post Grad.’ Director Vicky Jenson’s heart seems to be in the right place. You know, though, that judging from the vitality missing in this film’s execution, it was Andrew Adamson and not Jenson who brought ‘Shrek’ to such lively execution. Every shot in ‘Post Grad’ is strictly point and shoot, but you can’t expect much cinematic flare here. You can’t assume Jenson set out to make a lazy film, but that’s exactly what she has come up with.
That also doesn’t mean it is particularly commendable, either. There are moments where the film simply doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a harsh look at a young graduate trying to find a job in a recession-era world? Is it a jovial depiction of family struggles? Is it really a 90-minute sitcom? It seems to be all of these things at different point throughout.
Everyone in the cast seems to be doing their best. Bledel, like Reese Witherspoon’s blue-eyed younger sister, takes the lead with force. It just doesn’t feel right, though. She’s more of a supporting performer, and you get the impression she is in way over head here. Gilford and Santoro do their collective best as the potential love interests, but their scenes are so derivative of scenes from other films you can’t help but notice how much better they have been played before. Keaton dives in head-first working every bit of his magic towards the film’s comedy. Unfortunately, Jenson can’t keep up with him, and much of his spirited antics are simply lost in the mire of poor direction. Carol Burnett shows up as the grandmother, but she doesn’t seem to be giving it her all. It’s more for names sake that she’s in this film at all.
As bland as you can get while still being this colorful, ‘Post Grad’ is a film that seems to be resting on the laurels of how cute it is. I wouldn’t consider it particularly safe. It is a film that absolutely lives up to its PG-13 rating, forced F-bomb included. However it feels like a film that should have made the attempt at the PG. At least then the content of the film would have run right along with the safe, generic way Vicky Jenson created it. Neither moving nor completely wretched, it is a film that is simply there. It has too much to say and doesn’t quite know how to say it. In the end, it says nothing, and ‘Post Grad’ is a film that be leaving your consciousness very soon after you leave the theater.
