Liberal Arts / The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

I’m getting a bit behind with my reviews so thought I’d try a double review again in order to catch up. I was actually thinking of doing it anyway as I watched Liberal Arts and The Perks Of Being A Wallflower back to back and both have that problem of mainly being about characters that the audience might have difficulty caring about. To Arts first, which I walked in knowing zero about and soon started to realise that Josh Radnor’s film bares a canny resemblance to a Woody Allen film in respect that Radnor appears to be basically playing a version of himself on screen. Unfortunately, this isn’t “early, funny” Woody. A quick summary is that Radnor plays Jesse Fisher, a 30-something university admissions officer who returns to his alma mater for his favourite professor’s retirement party. Whilst there he meets student Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) and a (mainly) plutonic relationship sparks up between them. Radnor’s films suffers from a feeling of pretentiousness throughout, but to be fair to him his screenplay is an examination of relationships, ageing and reminiscing and it touches on most of these area’s enough times to give you food for thought. Arguably the men will relate to the film more than women as it is pretty much written from the male perspective, but even when I was nodding my head in acknowledge of the certain dilemmas men sometimes find themselves in when to comes to relationships my overriding feeling was that Fisher just need to grow a pair and get on with things. This is also incredibly slow moving and plenty of beautiful shots of sunsets, green grass and fancy college buildings can’t hide the fact that this is running time filler. Radnor would have been better advised to have spent more time beefing up the Richard Jenkins (as the professor) part, which, though it was obviously a plot device to aid the main plot, whenever we revisit it, it just comes across as, well, pointless. The film also suffers from these odd situations that only seem to occur in US films and TV, where pupils at University become good friends with their professors / tutors, a scenario that is virtually unknown in Europe. I suppose you could say that at least Radnor has done well to spin the plates of actor, writer and director all at once, but he really should have jettisoned in the edit a shocking performance by Zac Efron as a slacker on campus who dispels advice to Fisher whenever they bump into each other. There is one great scene though where Fisher uses a pen and paper to look at the mathematical age difference between himself and Zibby. It’s short and hilarious and makes you wonder why Radnor couldn’t have come up with more moments like this. When your main character’s a drip though, your film is always going to struggle. Wallflower has a similar problem in terms of its protagonists grating (this time it’s lots of young, rich, good looking teenagers, who you wouldn’t mind slapping) but it pulls away from Arts and becomes a better film thanks to a few decent performances and some twists in the script which although some may find change the tone too much, at least try to take us out of our comfort zone. Continuing the comparisons with Arts, based on his novel of the same name, director and scripter Stephen Chbosky’s film is based in an educational establishment and also concerns the problems of age differences in relationships. This time though it’s more of a study in adolescence as introverted freshman Charlie (Logan Lerman) joins a social circle of seniors who introduce him to the ways of the (young) world, where he falls for the (slightly) older Sam (Emma Watson). This actually reminded me of another film concerning a high school character called Charlie (Jon Poll’s Bartlett from 2007), though Chbosky’s take is less satirical and aims more for the heart. It just about works thanks to Lerman’s decent turn where he combines naivety with a hidden darkness. Even better is Ezra Miller (as flamboyant friend Patrick) getting the chance to show a lot more acting chops (though he could be accused for hamming it up too much at times) than he did as the miserable teen killer in We Need To Talk About Kevin. The film has raised interest as this is Watson’s first mainstream role since some sort of film series starring a young boy wizard or something. However, the marketing is a bit mis-leading as she doesn’t appear for long periods of the film and when she does there isn’t much on show to say she’ll be securing leading parts anytime soon. There’s an eclectic soundtrack that gives music buffs a treat, but that does lead to a serious duff note in one of the films key scenes where the characters, despite being purveyors of all things musical, appear to have never heard of David Bowie’s hit Heroes. Allegedly there were copyright issues which meant the scene was shot before it was certain what piece of music was going to be used, but even that could have been sorted in the edit or alternate takes shot at the time, surely? Overall though Wallflower is a far better film than Arts, but it still boils down to how much teenage angst you can take on the big screen.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
Probably a bit unfair to compare with each other, but Flowers beat Arts due to its better script and performances. Liberal Arts, Rating: 4/10. Wallflower, Rating: 6/10.