Liberal Arts 

Radnor stars in his second directorial effort as a 35-year-old who never really left the soul-searching of college behind, as evidenced by his job as a college-admissions counselor. Following a breakup, the directionless, emotionally stunted Radnor returns to his alma mater for the retirement party of a beloved professor (Richard Jenkins) and strikes up an unlikely friendship with Olsen that threatens to turn into something more.

In Liberal Arts, Radnor and Olsen woo each other via a series of twee letters because Olsen, being a free-spirited waif too whimsical and pure for these technology-crazed times, favors old-fashioned pen-and-ink letters over newfangled abominations like email. It’s a bibliophile romance of the most cloying, insufferable variety even before Olsen has Radnor read Twilight, whereupon the film favors audiences with the first-ever montage of a middle-aged man reading a Stephenie Meyer novel in a series of picturesque collegiate settings. Liberal Arts fails to make glum stasis compelling, especially via Radnor’s morose lead performance; it doesn’t help that Jenkins and Janney’s prickly, agreeably grown-up turns make Radnor look like even more of a blurry, adolescent blob of unmerited self-pity by comparison. Liberal Arts has the tony look and feel of a vintage Woody Allen movie, but the sophistication is all surface-level. Radnor will never ascend to Allen’s rarified realm, but judging by his forgettable first two features, he could give Ed Burns competition.