When I saw The Art of Getting By was going to star Freddie Highmore, I guffawed out loud. That kid? The one from Spiderwick Chronicles and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Well, dude bro isn’t a kid anymore. Well. Kiddish. But he is a lot taller and way more mature.
Or at least Emma Roberts is super short.
The movie begins with George having to explain why he didn’t do his trigonometry homework. Why? Because he claims he realized his own mortality last night and everything else just seemed unimportant. So at that moment I figured this George guy was supposed to be very smart, but you know, an underachiever. What happens in this movie? Him accidentally befriending Emma Roberts. George falls in love with her, but has some social anxieties to go with the rest of his problems (including becoming poor?) so he flips a shit of course. It also turns out that by the end of the year, thanks to never doing any work (well, gradable work), he also will not graduate.
Alright, so my plot write up is kind of weak. It is hard to say what really happens in this movie without giving a lot of it away.
In fact, I had a hard time figuring out if I even liked it overall or not. I thought Freddie did a great job. The dialogue used I definitely loved, as he talked way too smart. There is a great scene where he calmly and rationally told his parents to leave him alone. Giving nice reasons and everything.
But really, that is all I probably really liked. The ending wasn’t at all original. The side story involving the artist Andrew Levitas wasn’t anything special either. The only great parts involved George and his interactions with his family and new friends. The story might not appeal to everyone. In fact, it is just one of those “privileged white people problems” movies. I think that is why the critics hated it so much.
Sometimes people like those kind of movies though.
But because Freddie just did so gosh darn good, I have to give it an okay rating.