The Art of Getting By

The Art of Getting By is an unfortunately titled movie as it does feel like the writer/director, having assembled a pastiche of other works, just figured it’d do…

This film opens as it means to continue, a bad cover by The Shins of the Postal Service’s 2003 song ‘Silhouettes’ almost positions the film as an equally inept cover of 2003 film Igby Goes Down. George (Freddie Highmore) shirks his homework and floats friendless thru his elite NYC high school until he begins a cutesy non-romance with Sally (Emma Roberts), threatened by George’s own remarkable idiocy and the understandable insistence of the principal (Dirty Sexy Money’s Blair Underwood) that he do his homework or get out. It’s as turgid as that synopsis sounds… This isn’t as interesting in its depiction of privileged New York teenagers with the best fake IDs in the business as a single episode of Gossip Girl. Neither is it as intelligent or touching as Adventureland in capturing a non-romance between a confident girl and an awkward boy having an over-educated existential crisis in a suddenly financially insecure world.

It’s never clear why Sally likes George. Sure, George rescues Sally from a smoking violation, but after that he’s embarrassingly solipsistic and pretentious. His intimations of mortality are sub-Smiths lyrics, and his constantly worn overcoat a painful affectation. George explains that you must cut school rarely to keep the experience special, and do something culturally rewarding like take in (the rubbish) Zazie Dans le Metro in a Louis Malle season at a wonderful little boho cinema. He (of course) ploughs through literature but refuses to do his homework, and (of course) sketches constantly but won’t paint because (sigh) he has nothing to express. When put to it, will he draw her? When she has to make a grand gesture, will she forsake thousands of dollars by not catching her plane to Europe? On this day two years ago I praised (500) Days of Summer for obliterating those infuriating rom-com tropes, but this film once again asks those questions.

Sasha Spielberg has a staggeringly irrelevant but constantly name-checked role, but then nearly everyone is irrelevant bar George and Sally (including an oddly uncredited Alicia Silverstone as George’s English teacher), even if Underwood is Fassbendering. Despite numerous aggravating montages with an indie-schmindie score akin to Death Cab for Cutie tuning their instruments this film’s 83 minutes feels more like a painfully over-extended 123 minutes. I previously eviscerated Freddie Highmore’s 2007 movie August Rush, and this is every bit as wretched. Igby Goes Down was powered by Kieran Culkin’s sublime turn as the titular sardonic teenager, but even if Highmore equalled Culkin’s charisma he’d be sunk by not having that wonderfully literate script.

Roberts does her best to save this train-wreck but this is Igby Goes Down thrown in a blender with a dire rom-com. Avoid…

1/5