Liberal Arts

Movie: Liberal Arts

Genre: drama

Synopsis: Jesse (Josh Radnor) is a 35-year old college admissions worker in New York.  He considers the best years of his life to have been when he was in college.  He gets the opportunity to visit his alma mater when he is invited to the retirement dinner of one of his former professors (Richard Jenkins).  While there, he meets Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), a 19-year-old sophomore.  The two have an instant connection and really hit it off.  The age difference is something which Jesse has a difficult time dealing with.  The movie follows the relationship and how it forces Jesse to take a look at his life and how he is kind of stuck.

My two cents: I really enjoyed this movie – although I would have changed some of the last 20 minutes.  Jesse and Zibby had a great chemistry.  There were several side stories – one of them involved another former professor (Allison Janney) and one of them involved a somewhat mystical person played by Zac Effron.   Very solid performances and a pretty nice story line – although I have to say that I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the movie more than the last 1/3.

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