What makes it different from others?

An action-packed slog

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

When it comes to filmmaking actor-director Josh Radnor is either lucky or very, very good.In Liberal Arts he gives us a satisfying story of chaste infatuation between two compelling people who don't belong in the same space and who, following societal mores, ought to know better. Radnor stars as the male lead,"Jesse," a 35 year old alum of a pretty, bucolic liberal arts college somewhere in 'wholesome Ohio.' The faculty throw a festschrift for Jesse's favorite old professor, and he's invited to give remarks, and travels in for a weekend. Where he meets Elizabeth Olsen's "Zibby," a 19 year old student replete with a dorm room, put-out roommate, paper latte cup, and head full of searching thoughts. Zibby, as Olsen creates her, is more Lolita than Anne of Green Gables, or so things seem. An 'old soul', an 'advanced student' of ideal relationships with men, Olsen's character is devastatingly magnetic, both for Jessee and the audience. Jesse and Zibby meet, they create (but carefully do not ignite from) sparks, they discuss music, writing, reading, as the story builds toward what the audience expects will be a torrid mutual spellbound co-ravishment. Both actors reward the close-in camera work Radnor selects for many of their minutes on screen together. The story ends as it should end.Adding appreciable interest to the film are Allison Janney, Richard Jenkins, and Zac Efron. Janney and Jenkins in particular score small soliloquistic moments about life, ageing, and happiness, and they deliver focused punches of emotional color without overstepping their marks of support. Efron plays a campus fool-osopher expertly.Have you visited a college campus on a fair day, and found that just-off campus bar or diner, ventured inside, found the lighting and wood paneling and servers to be charming, ordered some comfort food, say a patty melt or a shrimp taco, plunged teeth in, and felt that feeling of escape, into the innocence and simple comforts of university life? That moment is what this film feels like once the credits roll.If this is how Radnor makes films, Radnor should get to make all the films he wants.

I liked watching Josh in HIMYM and I was hoping I would like his film.Unfortunately, I correctly guessed the ending within five minutes. The foreshadowing was too obvious. Yes, we know Jesse is probably not going to end up with the girl who is feasibly young enough to be his daughter from a teenage pregnancy, and we can accept knowing the likelihood of that, but that is all we want to know. When that part is so obvious, we want the end to be more of a surprise. At least I do. I enjoyed the acting in the film. However, the humour from Josh's character sometimes seemed too similar to the humour I'd expect from Ted Mosby in How I Met Your Mother. During the conversation with the depressed student in the hospital, the student asked Jesse why he flew back to talk to him. When Jesse responded "I have a soft spot for good readers...", I felt like it was really trivializing a serious moment; it was serious to the boy. In that moment I really wanted Jesse to say something that was actually authentic.

Liberal Arts is definitely the comedy for anyone who went off to a four-year college and loved the learning, romance and soul-searching that went inside. Most of us moved on to adulthood after graduation, but some do remain trapped, and occasionally they become professors.Josh Radnor plays Jesse, a man whose job is in New York but whose heart is in college in Ohio. At 35, he gets a call from a beloved retiring professor who asks him to speak on his behalf, and the trip time- warps him back to when life seemed more meaningful. When he gets there, he encounters a host of people, usually on a one-on-one basis, who seem to feed into his nostalgia. There is the old professor, who again becomes something of a father figure, the previously hot but older lit professor, who again holds a fascination for him, the fanatical but psychologically unstable lit student, who no doubt reminds him of him but is dangerously on the edge, and, last but not least, the gorgeous and intelligent coed who gives him perhaps another crack at his bungled days of college romance.The movie is interesting because it shows the dangers of what could happen if the sentimentality gets out of hand; college is actually real life, but sometime you don't know it at the time. When Jessie is attracted to Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), he is perhaps projecting himself into a more beloved time. For her part, she is advanced in maturity and looking for someone like Jesse who can speak to that part of her, but she is still too young to understand the complications of what she is getting involved in. It is to the movie's credit that the romance is treated in such a witty and insightful way, and the storytelling is original and first-rate.Actually, the time warp is not always detrimental. Jesse befriends a kindred 19-year-old soul (Dean--John Magaro) and, because of their mutual literacy, becomes literally the only person in the world who understands him. As Dean drifts toward damaging himself, Jesse becomes a potential lifeboat.Interactions like this, between an (almost) grown man and his past are really what make this movie work, and work well. In the end, you realize that happy nostalgia can be just as complex as a traumatic past.

Great movie, it's a simple story, but aren't those usually the best. I totally got and dig Josh Radnor's philosophy presented here. It's so relatable. Best line in the entire movie is when one guy tells the other "none of us feels like an adult, it's the world's dirty little secret...". It's about being disappointed about where you are in life compared to one's youthful expectations, when one is still at college having this romantic, naive and somewhat illusional perception of life, what it is, what it could become and then as the movie is about to end, coming to terms with where one is right now and embracing it. I loved the scenes where the main character listens to classical music with headphones on his ears, walking down the streets of New York. Finally a fresh use of the New York scenery. Do see it, because it's a gem between so many mediocre movies that get made these days.