BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

beginfallrise You want to see a film about a woman who graduates from college, immediately has her hopes absolutely ridiculously high up, thinking that she will be employed at her dream job right away and gets to move into an extremely fancy apartment? Who then, shockingly, has to face the cold hard facts of life, not getting a job even after many, many interviews, and is forced to move back to live with her parents? Who has a male friend that has always been there for her and that happens to also have been in love with her for a while now and has made that very clear, being a little bitter that she never loved him back? Who then meets a hot guy living next door, hooks up with him, and gets so caught up in him that she forgets a meeting with the boy who loves her, which makes the boy angry and blame her for not falling in love with him even though he has been waiting and waiting? Who then feels all guilty about it and has to watch the angry boy move away to New York, while she herself ends up getting her dream job after all and having everything getting sorted out in her life, but still feeling that something's wrong? Who then quits her dream job and moves to New York because, apparently, she IS in love with the angry boy after all? Who arrives at the angry boy's dorm, reporting all her deepest feelings to him in the doorway, and finally notices that there is another woman in the room, which, obviously, makes her turn away and run outside, bemused? Who then is stopped by the angry boy, who explains that the woman was his resident adviser? Who then kisses the angry boy and tells him that she loves him, and lives with him happily ever after?In case this is precisely what you're looking for, by all means - watch this film. Should be perfectly suitable for your needs.

romanorum1 Curvy and pretty Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel), who comes from a decent family, has planned for her future since she was a young girl. Having worked hard in college for good grades, she is very confident that she will latch onto her dream job at the Happerman and Browning publishing house. But it is a bad omen when, on the day of her interview, her car is sideswiped by a hit-and-run stake body truck driver in downtown Los Angeles. And with no witness in such a busy area! Anyway, disheveled but not shattered Ryden somehow arrives to the interview on time, only to find almost a dozen applicants also applying for the same position. Worse for Ryden, her rival Jessica Bard (Catherine Reitman), the class valedictorian, is also there. Jessica walks away with the job as Ryden's world comes crashing down around her. Over the course of the next few weeks, reality becomes difficult as our heroine Ryden is unable to secure meaningful employment. Lacking funds, she is forced to vacate her new apartment to return home with her family. So, for most of the movie, the plot is centered on Ryden's frustration. Meanwhile Ryden has a boyfriend Adam Davies (Zach Gilford), a likable enough fellow, who loves to sing and play the guitar (not too well, though). Adam has applied to law school at Columbia University. in NY. Now the Ryden-Zach romance is the movie subplot to Ryden's job dilemma. But the denouement changes the movie direction and the ending is simply not inspiring. Along the way there are complications, like the potential romance with next door neighbor and cat-owner David (Rodrigo Santoro), to whom Ryden is obviously attracted. Taking away from the main plot, the screenplay relapses into such fluky comedy scenes like Grandma Maureen (Carol Burnett) shopping for her own coffin. Then there is daffy dad Walter (Michael Keaton) who decides to make a living selling belt buckles that he does not realize are stolen. It is almost as bad as the happenings at his shopping mall luggage concession where he forces a ludicrous bellhop costume upon poor Ryden. Another odd set is the son's unrelated soapbox car race; there is no purpose or amusement in showing the boy (Bobby Coleman) crashing into the pond. On a more positive note, the Malby family is certainly likable. In addition, the movie fortunately is without excessive swearing and gross- out scenes that seem to predominate nowadays. And Ryden Malby as the lead is not without talent although her script does her little justice. Michael Keaton as Walter Malby is fine as Ryden's unconventional father. He acts like those well-meaning but madcap dads of 1950s American television. Jane Lynch as Walter's wife Carmella has little to do. Carol Burnett, one of America's all-time greatest comediennes, plays wacky Grandma Maureen, who always has her oxygen tank in tow. She's OK, but is nothing like the old Carol Burnett. Overall the film is not among the worst of its kind and is bearable.

MBunge If you're a fan of TV talkfest Gilmore Girls, Post Grad is probably as close as you're ever going to get to a GG movie. Lorelai is nowhere to be found, but Alexis Bledel is basically playing Rory and she's surrounded by a clutch of oddballs right out of Stars Hollow. If you've never seen Gilmore Girls, you'll only be able to tolerate this mildly amusing and terminally predictable film until it wears out its welcome, which it does in a very big way.Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel) is a young and ambitious college graduate who's on the verge of getting the job she's dreamed of her whole life. But when that job goes to her lifelong scholastic rival, Ryden has to move back in with her parents and deal with her father (Michael Keaton), who's like a combination of Ralph Kramden and Norton from The Honeymooners. When not preoccupied by her dad or her futile job search, Ryden also falls in like with the handsome foreigner next door (Rodrigo Santoro) and remains an indifferent bitch to her best friend (Zach Gilford), who is totally in love with her while she treats him like a gay foot stool. Some funny things happen, many of which don't involve Ryden, and then screenwriter Kelly Fremon pulls a major plot point and two big emotional moments completely out of her ass and gives Ryden a weirdly anti-feminist happy ending that the character has done nothing to deserve.Bledel is a pleasant and attractive presence on screen, though her eyes are so blue that there a moments when she resembles one of the Na'vi from Avatar. Michael Keaton and Carol Burnett as Ryden's live-in grandma use their comedy chops to breathe a lot of life into shallowly drawn roles. And at only 88 minutes long, Post Grad moves along at a good enough clip to hold your interest for a surprisingly long time, given the extraordinarily ordinary story its telling. And unless you've been dying to see Rory Gilmore say the S-word, that's about all the positives to be found in this production.The negatives of Post Grad aren't that bad, but there are just so bleepin' many of them. To start with, Ryden is not all that sympathetic a girl. She starts out kind of charmingly arrogant and presumptuous, then falls back into just plain arrogant and self-pitying. When that's compounded by the exploitative nature of her relationship with Zach Gilford's character, where she knows he loves her but she's content to keep him around as a platonic sidekick, you're left with the extremely likable Bledel playing someone you wouldn't miss if she got hit by a truck.Then there's the consistently poor writing. There's a subplot involving Ryden's dad and her little brother that, and I'm not joking, consists of not much more than 5 or 6 lines of dialog and maybe a minute or two of screen time but leads up to one of those big emotional moments Fremon pulled out of her ass. I didn't even realize it was an actual subplot until it got to that out-of-left-field climax. Jane Lynch as Ryden's mom is also given nothing to work with. Her character couldn't be more unformed if she were warm Jello and couldn't be more generic if she had a bar code on her forehead. And then there's a whole scene where Ryden literally does nothing but stand around while the story suddenly becomes all about the career frustrations of the foreigner next door.By the time the ending came around and Ryden gave up all of the dreams she ever had for her life to fly across the country and be a girlfriend to Zach Gilford's character, after showing as much sexual or romantic interest in him as Barbara Streisand would have for Rush Limbaugh, I only wanted this movie to go away. Which is unfortunate because Post Grad started out rather engaging, but the plot is so badly conceived and structured that I felt like my intelligence was being deliberately insulted.Alexis Bledel could be the star of a really smart and funny film about a young woman trying to make her way in the world. This ain't it.

LilyDaleLady This is a flighty, dumb, insubstantial film, and in ordinary circumstances I'd either never bother to review it or recommend it only to fans of Alexis Bleidel. But I think this is a unique period -- the last couple years -- historically, in terms of the economy and the tremendous hit that young people entering the job market have endured. Had this film even been MEDIOCRE, it might have really had resonance with this group (or their suffering, bill-paying parents) but it's just one insult to the intelligence after another.Written and conceived by Kelly Fremon, a first time scriptwriter who was working as a temp at Fox Studios, it is somewhat based on her own difficulty "trying to launch" after college. But "Post Grad' comes across as if it were written by a Martian, totally unaccustomed to how earthlings really live their lives and based entirely on what the Martian viewed in snippets of old TV sitcoms.The films starts out with a couple bright moments as Bleidel's character "Ryden Malby" talks to us from her facebook page about her dreams and aspirations. Ryden, who dresses all through the film in prissy matronly outfits better suited to a middle- aged woman -- and one circa 1985, down to her silk bow blouse -- goes to ONE interview...at what she claims is "the only publishing company in Los Angeles" At no time, does Ryden ever think of talk about another publishing company...a film company....a PR firm...going out of town for a job to San Francisco or hey! New York City (publishing capital of the WORLD). NO --it's this one firm or NOTHING.Then she goes to work for her dad at his luggage store in the mall, where bizarrely he forces her to wear a strange "monkey suit" (that fits like sprayed enamel on Bleidel's tiny figure) and use bizarrely aggressive sales techniques (for luggage?). She quits after about 30 minutes on the job. Later, Ryden gets a job with the across-the-street neighbor -- a ridiculously handsome South American photographer (yeah, right -- in the 'burbs) who (after her dad runs over his CAT) seduces her on a blow-up plastic sofa (seriously) until her parents burst into his house unannounced. He hires her as his (ahem) personal assistant, a job that last a few hours before HE quits, walks out and decides to move back to South America!Later in the film, Ryden gets offered her "dream" job anyhow and what does she do ? SHE QUITS IN ONE WEEK! And her parents not only approve, but encourage her to follow her (formerly) platonic male friend (who she has decided abruptly and for no real reason is the love of her life, having ignored him for at least the past decade) and so she leaves a wonderful job on the spur of the moment....to apparently go live with him at law school. In his dorm room.I wonder if writer Kelly Fremon ever even went to school or had any kind of realistic circumstances (like, say, having to work your way through school, or borrow tons of money to get a degree).If you are dumb enough to quit a career-making dream job after ONE WEEK, you deserve a lifetime asking "do you want fries with these?" I don't know any set of parents ON THE PLANET who would encourage you to quit after ONE WEEK. Weren't Ryden and Adam (Zach Gilford) away at different colleges just WEEKS EARLIER? Has nobody heard of VISITING? Waiting till one or the other graduates?I might add, the time frame is ridiculous: presumably Ryden graduates in mid-June or so and Adam is off to law school in late August. That mean the entire story unfolds in roughly two months. TWO LOUSY MONTHS and this girl has given up on a job!Did they ever even read an article about soapbox derbies? (Hint: you cannot put a COFFIN on skis, and compete against actual soapbox racers.) Can they do math? -- parents who marry in 1976 are unlikely to have their oldest child graduating in 2009! (It's THIRTY THREE YEARS later!)Overall, I wonder if this is even the script that Fremon wrote -- or if the producers and directors knew it was trash, so they thought they'd liven it up with a lot of physical humor (cats run over, crashed cars, soap box races, crazy grandma jokes). It doesn't work, though - - the REAL humor would be in the character's despair and increasing desperation to find work. As a result though, the plot meanders strangely of course, seemingly more interested in Michael Keatons' "Dad Malby" and Zach Gilford's "Adam", filling the screen with odd detours (Keaton's brush with jail time for selling stolen belt buckles, Gilford's strange dad -- a wasted J.K.Simmons in a single scene -- screwing a checkout clerk at his grocery store -- things that just make you think "say what?")Ditto for the grand dame of all physical comedy, the great Carol Burnett -- what is she doing in this dreck? it's as if her wandered in from another film entirely -- or the brilliant Jane Lynch, absolutely utterly criminally wasted here a bland generic mom character.In short, this is one of the worst written, worst produced, lamest and unfunniest films I have seen in years. AVOID AVOID AVOID -- not even at the $1 Red Box, not even as free streaming video. NO.