Reseñas de la crítica

Radnor keeps his Woody Allen-esque self-obsessive sufficiently on the right side of self-aware to keep him from disappearing up his own backside, and the film is undeniably charming. There’s something about the way it oozes sincerity... that engenders fondness.

[Liberal Arts is] a simple film in its dramatic construction but complex in the ideas, experiences and emotions it plays on and is the most intelligent, truthful movie about literature, higher education and the life of the mind since the Curtis Hanson film of Michael Chabon's novel Wonder Boys a dozen years ago.

Liberal Arts has enough good things in it to serve as a reminder to those lucky enough to spend three years away from real life that nothing in the end compares with the experience... [It] is fundamentally intelligent and perceptive about a world where everything, or nothing, seems to be equally possible and before life as we know it begins in earnest.

An indie campus comedy that is sweet-natured and high-minded, a seductive drama of youth and age; innocence and experience. It's a poignant network of May-to-December relationships... a decent, heart-on-the-sleeve movie; it pays its audience the compliment of treating us like intelligent people.

As a comedy of manners, ‘Liberal Arts’ is perfectly likeable. But you might find its talky touchy-feeliness on the smug side. A professor tells Jesse: ‘Put some armour around that gooey little heart.’ And the film could learn from that.

Liberal Arts is not unlikable: There are some intelligent observations about how humans woo, and the film is so suffused with sincerity you want to give it a pat on the head just for trying so hard. But, my god, how it rankles.

Elizabeth Olsen is the film’s most enchanting asset. In performance after performance, she has grown in assurance and appeal... She and Radnor have an ease together, a delighted comfort, that is so much more attractive and plausible than the ludicrous thrashings of “love” in so many pictures.

“Liberal Arts” has enough dark notes to make the smug, obsequious performance of its star, Josh Radnor, who also wrote and directed, tolerable and at times even likable... “Liberal Arts” is a much stronger, more deeply felt film than Mr. Radnor’s debut, “Happythankyoumoreplease.” But by throwing in two distracting subsidiary Ohio characters, it conveys a similar desperation to be liked.

Jesse's nobility is one of the primary reasons Liberal Arts is so hard to take. Granted, Radnor has scripted a few missteps for his alter ego... Most of the time, though, [he] seems pretty impressed with the version of himself he's playing.... Liberal Arts appears designed primarily to affirm Josh Radnor.

A light and lively comedy of manners... [The cast] is having such a grand time trading tart exchanges their mood proves infectious. The sparring helps offset some of the contrivances that make “Liberal Arts” less buttoned up than it should be — so an A for effort and a C for execution.

Liberal Arts initially takes an objective look at how refinement can shape one’s happiness, offering arguments for and against a certain educated elitism. But as the scale slowly tips toward embracing the escape of the lowbrow, there’s a slight sense the movie is writing its own get-out-of-jail-free card.

It’s about as pleasant and eager to please as a story of that nature can be and, in its best moments, evokes the wistful collegiate tone of Wonder Boys. In its lesser moments, of which there are more, Liberal Arts calls to mind more the spirit of an alumni magazine, so bathed in nostalgia for academia that you expect autumn leaves to flutter down to the theater floor.