35-year-old college admissions adviser Jesse Fisher (writer-director Josh Radnor) has hit a personal and professional wall. He still loves literature and linguistics but is dissatisfied with his current work. He's returned to his beloved former liberal arts college for the retirement party of his favourite former professor, Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins). While back at his alma mater, however, Jesse decides to stick around after the party and in doing so he meets several current students to whom he himself becomes a mentor: namely Zippy (Elizabeth Olsen, Mary-Kate and Ashley's younger sister), a drama student and Peter's friends' daughter, and Dean (John Magaro), a gifted but suicidal and substance-abusing bookworm. As Jesse helps these navigate their own troubled waters, he tries to find if not a loophole for new faith in his chosen career, then at least some peace and happiness from aiding and guiding others.
Josh Radnor's second film as writer-director after 2010's Happythankyoumoreplease (he made both while starring on the TV sitcom How I Met Your Mother), Liberal Arts is very artistically conventional, but it overcomes that so easily because as a genuine character study, it is as relatable and empathetic as they come. Personally, it reminded me very pleasantly and resonantly of my own university days and not just because I studied arts myself. It just evokes the sights, sounds and even the smell of campus life and young adulthood to a fever pitch, and Radnor cleverly neither romanticises nor vilifies any of that.
He plays Jesse with just the right shadings of world-weariness and awkwardness, and his eye for performance also is evident in the engaging and affecting turns he turns he draws from Olsen and Magaro. (Not to be outdone, either, are Allison Janney as Judith Fairfield, romantics teacher and Jesse's former crush, and Zac Efron as oddball student Nat.)
As I said, aesthetically Liberal Arts brings nothing new to the table. But its power lies fully in its message, which is conveyed so sweetly and patiently that it will strike a very deep chord with you, whatever you've studied. Liberal Arts is a coming-of-age flick that gets top grades from me.
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