‘Post Grad’ looks bad, according to critics
When I saw the “Post Grad” trailer, I had high hopes for this film. The concept is one you don’t see often in movies. There are a lot of movies about high school students, college students, families with kids and houses and perpetual bachelors and bachelorettes. There are not a lot of movies about the confusing transition that often comes right after college.
Furthermore, I am a big fan of Alexis Bledel, the lead in “Post Grad.” A couple of critics do say that she saved this movie, but most of them (88 percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, to be exact) think the film simply was terrible. You couldn’t even bribe them with cash now to go see it again. It’s too bad because I had really high hopes for this film, but here’s what the critics are saying in “Post Grad” movie reviews.
Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Working from a screenplay by Kelly Fremon, director Vicky Jenson delivers intermittent laughs. But this would-be comedy is so ineptly paced that it seems longer than “The Godfather” and its two sequels combined. Perhaps Jenson’s background as a co-director of animated films (”Shrek,” “Shark Tale”) was inadequate to the task of live-action directing. “Post Grad” lurches unenergetically from scene to scene.
It doesn’t help that Bledel, best known as co-star of the “Gilmore Girls” television series, can’t quite carry the film. In fact, her lackluster performance might give you a new appreciation for Reese Witherspoon. On the other hand, the filmmakers haven’t given Bledel much to work with. For the central character in a comedy, Ryden is appallingly lacking in depth.
Alicia Porter, Boston Phoenix
Vicky Jenson’s grainy Little Miss Sunshinespawn starts promisingly, with Carol Burnett as a caftan-clad coffin dodger inhaling oxygen and a bag of Cheetos. But it turns out the movie belongs to sapphire-eyed Alexis Bledel’s Ryden Malby, an earnest go-getter who after failing to nab her dream job returns home to her eccentric family and the googly gaze of her musician buddy (Zach Gilford).
Screenwriter Kelly Fremon dresses up the pabulum about following your passion, appreciating weirdness, and valuing ice cream with fitfully funny subplots. After all, this clan is kooky! Still, the shifts from wacky to tender feel manipulated, and there’s never any question where Bledel’s excessive eyebrow knitting will lead.
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
“Post Grad” is an innocuous — to the point of blandness — look at the “hardships” of a recent college grad as she struggles to land the perfect job and perfect boyfriend and wonders why it isn’t easier, like getting an A on a history exam.
The film from Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollock’s Montecito Picture Co., written and directed by Kelly Fremon and Vicky Jenson, respectively, is very much aimed at young girls. So this essentially is a 13-year-old’s fantasy of what it’s like to be 22. Naturally, it gets just about everything wrong, but its audience probably will lap it up.
S. James Snyder, Time Out New York
Timing’s everything in comedy, so perhaps Post Grad would have seemed peppier prior to the Great Recession; circa now, this comedy feels like a cynical stroll through the unemployment lines awaiting today’s class of seniors.
To check out more “Post Grad” movie reviews, head to Rotten Tomatoes.
