good back-story, and good acting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Josh Radnor writes, directs and stars in Liberal Arts. He plays Jesse Fisher a 35 year old introverted but bookish and charming nice guy who is an admissions interviewer at a New York City college.Fisher receives a call from his former college professor (Richard Jenkins) who asks him to attend his retirement party at his university in Ohio. While he is there he meets what seems to be a mature 19 year old student, Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) and both are attracted to each other, she inspires him to love classical music and opera but is hesitant to develop the relationship further because of their age difference. Zibby represents a hope for the future and vitality of youth that chimes with Fisher.He also meets his former English Romantics professor (Allison Janney) who he found inspirational for his love of poetry and literature as a student and later has a very unromantic one night stand with her only to discover she is jaded and has a heart of stone.Zac Efron pops up offering Fisher Zen like philosophy just when he needs it. Fisher also bumps into a depressed student who also reads the books that Fisher read as a student and Fisher feels compelled to reach out to him.Fisher finally meets a bookstore employee who shares the same love of literature he has and they are about the same age.The film is pleasant like Fisher but lacks backbone. Radnor is channelling Woody Allen, well three women fall for him in this movie but the movie lacks the cutting wit and melancholic bite which Allen could easily slip in his films.The film deals with the nostalgia of looking back which both Radnor and Jenkins do in this film. Even I felt a tingle when Jenkins admitted that he has always felt like a 19 year old, mainly because I had a similar thought earlier in the day before I watched this film.However Radnor is not strong enough an actor to keep up with skilled actors like Janney and Jenkins and his romance with Olsen did not look believable to me. A 19 year old would had ditched him as soon as he had a rant about Twilight type slushy vampire books.Some of the plot strands were unresolved, why did Jenkins change his mind about retiring and wanting three more years which the film never again dealt with.

A bright, refreshing, snappy script promises an evening of good cinema, but, unfortunately it doesn't last. The premise of an opportune romance between a nineteen year old and thirty five year old has been done several times over but here Olsen is convincing as a young women who wants to explore and be curious. For a while this film is willing to explore its own promise freely and with stylish brushstrokes, but then somewhere, around the middle the plot takes a rather clumsy detour and goes into standard fair mode.It isn't all bad, but it is a pity an opportunity to really dig deep into age gap romance is thrown away in preference to hackneyed story lines and the snap disappears.Five out of ten made up mostly of a good performance by Ms Olsen and her flatmate.

I could relate to every possible moment in the movie. Great dialogs, great actors. One of those movies you would not mind watching again and again!35 year old guy falls for 19 year old girl, but feels it would be inappropriate to act on it. Cast are fantastic. It's a small movie and not overly eventful, but I really enjoyed it. This is the second of Josh Radnor's films I have seen, I have been really impressed. And also with Elizabeth Olsen as an actress. Worth a watch.Liberal Arts is a resolutely vanilla-flavored concoction but still pleasant, amiable, and a little more thoughtful than your average rom- com.

I wasn't a big fan of Josh Radnor's TV show 'How I met your mother' but upon reading a review of this film there was something that made me want to put that to one side and watch this film.Liberal Arts isn't like most Rom-com's you see these days. It's slower and more talky but when a big laugh comes along it certainly is a big laugh. The concept behind this film may not be new but the delivery and approach of it is.With Radnor on good form as the likable Jesse and rising star Elizabeth Olsen shining in every scene this film is an enjoyable one and is both thought-provoking and funny at the same time. When you can get people like Zac Efron, Richard Jenkins and Allison Janney to take up the smaller roles you know you're on a winner.The ending, or even the last 30 minutes are where things start to slide a little bit and it's almost as if the film stops itself from going too edgy in order to appeal to the masses. For me I would have liked the ending to have trusted itself and its audience a bit more.A good film, worth seeking out.