The Art Of Getting By

Though it’s a while since I watched it, The Art of Getting By reminded me somewhat of Jon Poll’s 2006 film Charlie Bartlett, that of a precocious but lazy student who kicks against school authorities and who’s low profile attracts one of the prettiest girls in the class. The leads here are taken by Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts. Roberts is meant to be one of the up and coming stars of the screen but she is burdened here by a bland character and it’s Highmore (the kid from Love, Actually!) who upstages her. This is his first lead role and complete with American accent isn’t all that bad. However, he doesn’t actually have that much to do. This is more to do with the style of the film though which elects to tell the story less through dialogue and more through facial expressions and music (if you’re an Indie music fan you should love the soundtrack). The problem is the film doesn’t really have much of a story line and, even with a short running time, any ideas are stretched out into the thinnest sinews. If you are getting bored you can try and spot the offspring of two famous Hollywood cornerstones (Robards and Spielberg, respectively) but this small film lacks the quirk-factor that makes many of these entries into cult favourites and it’s very short on laughs. Plus you may be distracted by the fact that in the film the characters are meant to be the same age (and in reality there’s only a years difference between them) but Highmore looks about 14 and Roberts sometime in her late 20’s. That’s about it really. Short film, short review.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict

Slow direction and hard to care about characters means that even at 80 minutes this is a struggle to get through. Rating: 5/10.