Review: The Art of Getting By

Not 15 minutes into The Art of Getting By, it becomes patently obvious that the movie will be just like every other ‘offbeat’ young indie romance of the past two decades. It has the despondent Manhattan teen who’s really smart but too depressed to make an effort, the girl who’s totally out of his league but somehow bonds with him anyway, and all the irritating quirks needed to dress itself up and pass itself off as something new. If the script were submitted to any university screenwriting class, it would be covered in red markings of the word “cliche,” but somehow this same old Sundancey story has found its way to the big screen yet again.

As nagging as the tiredness of its premise is, however, it is not The Art of Getting By’s biggest problem. This type of movie can still work if it’s handled well enough, with dialogue and performances that overcome said tiredness to feel true-to-life. Adventureland and The Girl Next Door spring to mind as two recent films that played with the formula to great success, because they excelled in those two areas. While cliches are almost always evident, they do not have to be deal-breakers; after all, employing a familiar structure is a convenient way for a filmmaker to thrust the viewer right into the action without much introduction. But The Art of Getting By is not only cliche on the surface, it is chock-full of artificial characters interacting artificially. There is one good performance to latch onto–that of Emma Roberts, who deserves far better–but what’s a life-vest when you’re sinking into the icy-cold waters around the Titanic?

Freddie Highmore of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame, now high school-aged, plays the despondent teen. His name is George, and his major character quirk is that he doesn’t do any of his homework despite being wholly capable. As the title obtusely suggests, he does only what is required to barely get by. Why? Because George doesn’t believe there is any point in spending time on homework when there are bigger problems in the world, like famine in Africa or nuclear proliferation in North Korea. He “fears living,” which is apparently enough to turn you into an apathetic Antoine Doinel wannabe. In fact, perhaps George is deliberating channeling Antoine, because he’s clearly quite the French New Wave fan. You see, one of the first things he does with Roberts’ Sally, the pretty girl who takes an interest in him, is cut class to watch a Lois Malle classic at the Film Forum. Yes, this is the customary evidence that they are brilliant beyond their years but live by their own rules.

This type of film has always felt like a form of daydreaming for young-white-male directors, and The Art of Getting By is no exception. I have no idea who Gavin Wiesen is, but his movie shows no understanding of the ‘people’ that inhabit it. We get the sense that George–a rebel with a cause, albeit a phony one–is the kid that the comparatively straight-laced Wiesen wishes he could have been. And, of course, Emma Roberts is the girl he would have never dreamt of approaching in real life, but puts in the movie to imagine what it would have been like if he had. I admittedly sometimes fall for this style, as I take pleasure in projecting myself onto more adventurous characters, especially when they are paired with attractive young ladies like Roberts. But The Art of Getting By is so transparent and phony in its attempts at revised-catharsis that it proves nothing short of maddening.

More on that Roberts. She performs the miraculous task of making Sally, a caricature in the script, seem like a human being. Guys will lust for her, women will find truth in her. By comparison, I have no idea if Highmore’s work is good or bad, because he’s stuck in Wiesen’s cartoon, which is by its nature inauthentic. Predictably, however, The Art of Getting By sabotages the one thing going for it in Roberts by making Sally, who constantly teases George without ever committing to him, participate in the tidy, happy ending that is fundamentally untrue to her character. As much as Wiesen would like you to think that The Art of Getting By is about the real problems people face in life, it’s actually all about taking the easiest way out, just like its main character. Let’s face it: in a coming-of-age Amerindie, what purpose does a protagonist who doesn’t do his homework serve, other than to miraculously complete all of said homework during the last couple weeks of school, in order to symbolize how far he’s come? Yes, the movie is that bad.

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The Art of Getting By (2011, USA). Produced by Kara Baker, Patrick Baker, Matthew Vose Campbell, P. Jennifer Dana, Darren Goldberg, Jonathan Gray, Anthony Gudas, Andrew Levitas, Chris Marsh, Gretchen McGowan, Henry Pincus, Nick Quested, David Sweeney, Gia Walsh. Directed and written for the screen by Gavin Wiesen. Starring Freddie Highmore, Emma Roberts, Michael Angarano, Elizabeth Reaser Blair Underwood, and Rita Wilson. Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 84 minutes.