Movie Review Post Grad

Post-Grad (2009) 

Directed by Vicky Jenson

Written by Kelly Fremon

Starring Alexis Bledel, Zach Gilford, Rodrigo Santoro, Jane Lynch, Carol Burnett, Michael Keaton

Release Date August 21st, 2009

Published August 20th, 2009

The late great Gene Siskel is quoted as having asked this question about a movie: "Is this movie as interesting as watching a documentary of this same group of actors having lunch?".  It was a pass/fail standard that Mr. Siskel established for good and bad movies and applied to the new comedy Post Grad, we have a definite failure.

With a cast that includes Carol Burnett, Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch and Alexis Bledel, I would have rather watched them read reviews of their other movies than watch them play out this brutal mess of a comedy.

Post Grad ostensibly stars Alexis Bledel as a disastrously put upon college grad. As Ryden Malby, Bledel is a bright. sweet and utterly clueless gal who fails to secure a job before she graduates college. Hanging her hopes on one interview at the only company she wants to work for, Ryden not surprisingly finds herself jobless when the company hires someone more qualified than she.

Her troubles send her back to mom and dad's house. Mom and dad are played by Michael Keaton and Jane Lynch as the wacky approximations of sitcom characters. Keaton is an endlessly tinkering oddball who, in classic sitcom fashion, loves a good get rich quick scheme. They have another child, much younger than Ryden, who is even weirder and more off-putting than his bizarre parents.

And then there is grandma played by Carol Burnett. Her main character trait is waiting to die. She has an oxygen tank and at one point calls her family, including her young grandson, to a funeral parlor where she is looking to purchase a high end casket. This idea plays out in such a broad and bizarre way that sympathetic gang members and a casket on the lawn are somehow the result.

Of course, a film this mindless and idiotic has romantic complications. Ryden has a best friend played by Friday Night Lights QB Zach Gilford. Of course they are meant to be, he's in love with her for reasons only he knows, she's written as a dummy who can't see he's in love with her. Meanwhile, Ryden has a dalliance with a doofy neighbor, ten years her senior, that only exists to delay the inevitable. The neighbor has a cat and.. well... the less said about the cat the better.

Really, the less said about this movie the better. A week after audiences so foolishly passed on the terrific teen comedy Bandslam we get Post Grad, a movie with more power behind it and thus more likely to be seen. What a shame. Bandslam will likely be out of theaters by the end of this weekend while Post Grad stinks up far too many screens.

Post Grad is an idiot movie, filled with idiot characters trapped in an idiot approximation of a plot. I am begging you, if you can find Bandslam, see that movie and forget you have ever heard of Post Grad. Bandslam doesn't have long before it leaves theaters all together.