The first trailer for How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor’s second directorial feature, Liberal Arts, has landed online. Radnor stars as a 35-year-old whose yearning for his glory days of college is intensified when he strikes up a romance with a 19-year-old college student over a shared love of music and literature. The film debuted to a wildly positive reception earlier this year at Sundance, and despite the blaring music that screams “QUIRKY INDIE!” this trailer looks pretty swell. Radnor and Elizabeth Olsen seem to have some genuine chemistry, and without having to set up jokes every two minutes Radnor is able to give a restrained, funny, and affable performance. Given the positive buzz I’m inclined to believe that we’re in for something more than a by-the-numbers indie about a thirtysomething coming to terms with growing up, so Liberal Arts is definitely something I’m looking forward to in the coming months.
Hit the jump to watch the international trailer. The film also stars Richard Jenkins and Allison Janney. Liberal Arts opens on September 14th.
Here’s the official synopsis followed by the trailer for Liberal Arts:
Newly single, 35, and uninspired by his job, Jesse Fisher worries that his best days are behind him. But no matter how much he buries his head in a book, life keeps pulling Jesse back. When his favorite college professor invites him to campus to speak at his retirement dinner, Jesse jumps at the chance. He is prepared for the nostalgia of the dining halls and dorm rooms, the parties and poetry seminars; what he doesn’t see coming is Zibby—a beautiful, precocious, classical-music-loving sophomore. Zibby awakens scary, exciting, long-dormant feelings of possibility and connection that Jesse thought he had buried forever.
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This looks bad. No one wants to watch a 35 year old hipster movie.
Just you wait, in the last 30 minutes he and his former professor get in a major fight and end up dueling to the death. This trailer just hides that action, you know a surprise final act.
Saw this at the New Zealand International Film Festival last week. It’s very good: warm, funny, with engaging characters. The chemistry and arc of the relationship between Radnor and Olsen is just right and the film’s viewpoints on university, ageing and becoming an adult (whatever that really means these days) are well observed. It’s lacking the edge that would make it a classic, but you won’t come out of it feeling short-changed.
Saw this at the New Zealand International Film Festival last week. It’s very good: warm, funny, with engaging characters. The chemistry and arc of the relationship between Radnor and Olsen is just right and the film’s viewpoints on university, ageing and becoming an adult (whatever that really means these days) are well observed. It’s lacking the edge that would make it a classic, but you won’t come out of it feeling short-changed.
I went to Kenyon shortly after Josh Radner graduated. My older friends said he was arguably the most arrogent guy on campus who walked around as if few were worthy to be in his presence.
Of course the movie is lacking an edge. What this movie needs is less warm and fuzzy moments being a douche and more frattiness (the fun part of Kenyon). Sorry, unlike Josh Radner, I didn\’t spend my college experience moping around a coffee shop bitching and judging everyone else; instead, I raged with all my friends because that\’s someone that gets a lot harder to do after college.