Rather than mooching off her parents and continuing to beer-bong like it’s senior year, California college graduate Ryden (Alexis Bledel) instead goes forth in search of work in Post Grad, a wretched dramedy about the depths of twentysomething careerist self-absorption. After failing to land her publishing house dream job, Ryden is forced to move back in with her excruciatingly “weird” family, with kooky Dad (Michael Keaton) getting arrested for selling stolen belt buckles, little brother (Bobby Coleman) showing a fondness for licking other kids’ heads, Grandma (Carol Burnett) taking the clan coffin shopping, and Mom (Jane Lynch) asked to do little more than take up space. During her job hunt, Ryden hangs out with Adam (Zach Gilford), a platonic friend who lionizes Eskimo Pies as the remedy for unhappiness and openly expresses love for Ryden. Unfortunately, despite Gilford serving as a poor man’s Mary Stuart Masterson to Bledel’s Eric Stoltz, their soulmates story arc, courtesy of Ryden’s career-first selfishness, is far from some kind of wonderful. Narcissistic Ryden soon hooks up with a hunky TV infomercial director (Rodrigo Santoro), thereby missing budding musician Adam’s big show and causing him to rethink attending law school in NYC, an inert bit of serious business that’s matched with random jokey interludes involving Ryden’s oh-so-strange relatives.
Shot with CW-level aptitude and inclined to end scenes on awkward comedic or dramatic beats, Post Grad haphazardly synthesizes moments of levity with gravity, but it truly one-ups itself with a finale so illogically plotted, regressive, and all-around putrid, spoiling it seems apt. Therefore: After conveniently nabbing her aforementioned perfect editorial position, Ryden is told by Santoro’s stud that being with loved ones is what makes life worth living, sees that Eskimo Pies really do cheer people up, and thus does what any driven career woman would do by, um, abandoning job and family for New York and Adam? But when she gets to the Big Apple, she finds him in the company of another woman! No worries though: She’s just his resident advisor, attending to a maintenance issue. Alas, it’s not related to fixing this broken film.
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