Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

An Exercise In Nonsense

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Freddie Highmore was appropriate as child star ( Spiderwick Chronicles ) and he shines , in this movie , as a teen , not fitting in his surroundings but it is not a typical weird-teen drama , loved it because of its heart .

it was perfect. everything was good. it was relate-able. it was real. that's what life is all about. and we are not supposed to get everything we want. George deserved better. it was perfect until the last minute of the movie. i knew i had to stop the movie right after he graduated. this is not a Disney movie and the writer just ruined the ending. it would have been best if everybody just moved on with their lives. I WAS DISAPPOINTED, big-time. to the writer, if you thought ending the movie with them getting together was good, nope, it actually ruined a supposedly great movie. i'm supposed to give it a 1- star but since i'm a fan of Freddie, i gave it another one. :)

I usually don't have a habit of writing reviews for movies. This one however left a couple of thoughts on my mind that I'd like to express. Well for starters, I love the pace (a relatively quick movie), the atmosphere which it has (no Hollywood spotless scenes, just simple everyday life) , the reality of the whole plot. I think within a lot of us there's a George in our nature, a bit of insecurity, a bit of slacking off, a bit of the "fuck the world" feeling so right away the main character is easy to relate to. I loved how raw it all was, I can relate to his lack of motivation so bad it almost hurts and to that the feelings of "parents are not helping" and "girl I like doesn't feel the same way" is describing my high school life entirely! Up to the point where he was "betrayed" by the one girl he fell for I was rating this movie a 9. The truth is I'm not a big fan of happy endings cause they are too expected & not realistic enough for my taste. When I saw Sally return to George and not leave for Europe I was like "meh, that's no 9" but I can appreciate how the message of "don't let what you truly desire slip off your hands" affected this movie. Being moving and motivating as it was, this movie was realistic enough to be at least an 8, although it wasn't quite a "Get off your butt and live life to the fullest"!

Well-filmed and interestingly plotted coming-of-age story that's very revealing of adolescent ennui and indecision and the reasons behind same. George Zinavoy is a believable character: Smart, talented, and failing to see the point of the apparent rat-race going on around him (I remember that feeling oh-so-well). Sally Howe is similarly convincing and makes an effective counter-character to George.Definitely worth seeing if you like this sort of thing, but nothing truly special. The story and character development, though not just the same ol', are both a little sketchy and underdeveloped. The script and acting are realistic, but again, nothing spectacular. THE ART of GETTING BY has some real depth to it; nevertheless, it could have gone a little deeper. Only 83 minutes--it might have been better if it had taken more time to tell the story.