Movie Review: "The Art of Getting By"

It’s a problem for the movie when your main character, the guy you’re supposed to identify with, is no more engaging than a piece of cardboard. But that’s what’s happened in “The Art of Getting By,” a curiously lifeless film about what should be one of the most turbulent times in a young man’s life – high school.

Freddie Highmore (“Finding Neverland”) is George, a sullen art student who’s decided to stop doing his homework because, well, there are so many other horrible things happening in the world that homework doesn’t matter. Global warming, war, that Hieronymus Bosch painting on his wall… they’re all getting him down, man. Emma Roberts (Julia’s niece) is Sally, the smoking (literally, she smokes, which makes her dangerous, I guess) hot girl that in so many words asks George to be her boyfriend. But he turns her down, presumably out of shyness. I guess I can relate to that.

No one listens to anyone else in this movie! Even when George finally starts to admit how much of a wanker he’s been to everyone, his mom cuts him off to talk about her divorce. Now, George could be one of those charming slackers if only he were allowed to say anything remotely witty, or smile, or even remove his fists from the overcoat he wears inside and outside at all hours. But instead, he sulks his way through the movie, crying over his own inaction. We’re asked to feel sorry for him when Sally hooks up with an older guy, and when George finally delivers his equivalent of the “Manhattan” closing scene to Sally, it’s supposed to be a big moment. Instead, it’s as flat as the gray clouds that hang over the Hudson.