Derivative, formulaic and forgettable, "The Art of Getting By" almost put me to napping. By the end I knew that if I had snoozed for an hour, I would have awoke to find I'd missed almost nothing, and this movie is only 84 minutes.
There's just not much to this picture as far as content, style or originality. We've seen plenty of films before about high school slackers - just few this dreadfully dull.
Freddie Highmore proved an intriguing youngster in the odd "August Rush" and a courageous teen in the spooky coming-of-age tale "The Spiderwick Chronicles," but his talents are smothered in this meandering mess.
He plays George, who's like many high schoolers at the beginning of senior year: He's an unfocused loafer, not at all in tune with those academic aces who long ago figured out their next school, their career goals, their mating pool.
George's problem is that he's a serious fatalist. What his teachers tell him is important doesn't seem at all important. He knows that he has more important things to do, but he has no idea what these things are.
You might think of him as a teen Woody Allen, but without the humor.
The movie's problem is that George can't figure out what he wants to do, even by the end of the film. But then neither does his mother (played by Rita Wilson), a short-sighted woman; his mentor (Michael Angarano), an artist lacking in scruples; or his directionless would-be friend/girlfriend/whatever (Emma Roberts).
It is slightly too simple to say that Highmore's uninspired-artist character getting the hook-up with Roberts' hot babe character is the cure to slackerdom, but only slightly. Love or something like it can inspire a young man, an original thought for this film.
In addition to Wilson and Angarano, the film's interesting-but-completely-wasted cast includes Blair Underwood as a principal full of platitudes and Alicia Silverstone as one of George's teachers. You have to think that the "Clueless" star, now guiding teen students, offered some opportunity for irony.
But "The Art of Getting By" wouldn't understand such humor. In the world of first-time feature writer-director Gavin Wiesen, existential angst doesn't do funny.
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