Post Grad

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

Director: Vicky Jenson

Here's a youth-orientated flick that has a few good ideas but fails to follow through on any of them. The result is a ramshackle romcom that goes nowhere. Also going nowhere, in all probability, is leading lady Alexis Bledel, who's pretty enough and has amazing deep blue eyes, but a very limited talent: perkiness and an ability to remember lines just doesn't cut it.

Even so, she's a tad more memorable than vis-a-vis Gilford, as the embryonic law student and 'best friend' whom she loves but doesn't realise it. Instead, she has a fling with the Latin Lothario next door (Santoro). Newly graduated Alexis has designs to be a book editor, and gets an interview with a prestigious publishing company; she nets a wonderful loft apartment and pays the deposit by cheque. Of course, we know she isn't going to get her job - nasty valedictorian Catherine Reitman beats her to it - and that her cheque will never clear.

In no time she's living back home with harebrained dreamer Dad (Keaton), doting Mom (Lynch) and forever-dying Grandma (Burnett). The resulting film is just all over the place, with a seduction scene, a bad song, aimless scenes of office life and a soapbox derby sequence straight out of a 1970s' Disney comedy. And the decision Alexis makes at the end is inexplicable as well as insupportable. Just dire.

Alan Frank

USA 2009. UK Distributor: 20th Century Fox (Fox Atomic). Colour by deluxe.
88 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 27 Dec 2009