Post Grad [Movie Monday]

I went to go see the new movie Post Grad, starring Alexis Bledel, this past Friday. I wanted to see it because it looked like a movie that was about my life right now. I saw it as being about a young woman who has recently graduated from college and has to struggle with not being able to find a job and living with her parents. [Warning: there will be some spoilers, but the movie is so predictable that I don't know if it will matter]



While that is definitely part of the story, I was hoping for something more. I was hoping that the movie would delve deeper into the struggle that many people (including myself) are facing right now of going from the (limited) independence of college to the dependence of being unemployed and living with your parents while everyone else is out doing something fantastic. It's an internal struggle that many people would be able to identify with in this current economic climate.

The first part of the movie touched on this struggle. But then the movie just turned the predictable route. Ryden (Bledel) lands her dream job in publishing out of the blue. I would have liked to see her try some other jobs (other than working at her dad's luggage store for a total of 2 hours) and struggle in minimum wage work before the "happy ending" of landing that dream job.

After she lands this dream job, she has another dilemma to face: how does she reconcile going for her dream with keeping the people that she loves in her life? Oh, poor Ryden, she has to choose between a great job that can lead to a lot of great things and a cute guy that has been in love with her for four years and she finally realizes that she's in love with him too. And what do you guess she chooses? That's right, the guy. Because dream jobs come and go (even though she had to struggle to find the first one) but you are never complete without that guy by your side.

Maybe it's just the point that I am at in my life right now and the way that I was raised, but I would like, for once, to see a strong woman choose her career goals over the guy that's making her decide. To be fair, the guy in Post Grad didn't exactly make her decide between the two, but still.

Oh romantic comedies that try to pass themselves off as something else but end up being the same old formulaic movie. I was hoping to be able to see a little bit of myself in this movie. I guess I could say it's the story of my life right now with the exception of the dream job and the cute guy. While it attempts to show some of the struggles faced by recent graduates, it just ends up being the happily-ever-after -- with the guy -- story that is oh so common.