Adult World

Adult-World
Adult World

Adult World

Poetry majors, I bet, do all right once they have to face the real world outside of their college bubble that is if they can avoid dodging bill collectors who are after them for unpaid student loans.

I’m just speculating here, but unless you’re a rapper, jingle writer or Maya Angelou, versifying isn’t going to pay the rent.

That is the tricky spot Amy (Emma Roberts), from “Adult World,” finds herself in as soon as she leaves Syracuse University and realizes that being a poet doesn’t exactly impress most potential employers. Her understanding parents want to support her artistic endeavors, but not when it involves providing free room and board along with postage for all those rejected lit mag and writing contest submissions.

There’s another problem in this coming of age comedy: This over coddled wordsmith has unjustified confidence and zero life experience. She’s too good at self-delusion and not so good at self-expression.

So what’s a girl to do when she’s stuck in a cold, always-gray city in upstate New York with virtually no prospects except working in a sex shop? (Although it must be noted that before she goes inside Adult World and knocks down a wall of dildos during an anxiety attack prompted by realizing what kind of store the “Help Wanted” sign is advertising well before that moment she has decorated her bedroom wall with posters of Sylvia Plath.)

But don’t worry. Adult World both literally and metaphorically known as Adult World is less a den of sin than it is a colorful collection of supporting players whose stories might actually make for more interesting movies than Amy’s.

You may smile upon learning that Cloris Leachman plays the proprietress of Adult World, but your heart will sink when you realize director Scott Coffey (“Ellie Parker”) and writer Andy Cochran have neglected to give her anything interesting to do. Evan Peters (Roberts’ “American Horror Story” co-star and real-life fiancé) brings some dark-horse depth to Alex, a fellow clerk who clearly wants to get to know Amy better for some reason.

And then there’s cross-dressing customer Rubia (Armando Riesco, managing to avoid even the most treacherous cliches while in high heels), who takes Amy under her wing and gives her a place to stay.

At this point, you might be thinking: Hey, I saw “Boogie Nights.” Why is Adult World still open when you can download porn and order sex toys on the Internet? Alex offers an excuse about the pleasures of old-school browsing and immediate gratification. Uh-huh. Probably the same reason that there’s a thriving little bookstore nearby, where Amy finds out that her very favorite poet ever Rat Billings is doing a reading tonight.

And she is grateful for that because it lets John Cusack come in as a one-time bad boy of couplets who peaked at 18 and has turned into a sour scribe coasting on his early fame. What does Amy do when she meets her idol for the first time? She knocks over those in line at the signing and later yells to her would-be mentor, “I just want to smash your head open and take everything in there.”

Billings may try to run but he can’t hide he lives here, works here. He and Amy form some kind of a relationship her cleaning up his home, him muttering under his breath subtle insults while trying to give this unfocused creature a clue about how to cultivate what appear to be her meager talents. Or, as he derisively observes, “You would be the type of muse I would get.”

Cusack’s trademark handling of his sullen poet allows “Adult World” an opportunity to say something about youthful ambition and middle-age disillusionment beyond Billings dubbing Amy & co. as “Generation Mundane.”

But the film falls just short of fully accomplishing that aim. Too bad, because for a few moments I saw glimmers of another (better) young woman’s stalker-ish attachment to an older man story namely, 2001′s wonderful “Ghost World,” itself heavily borrowed from the equally essential 1964 treasure “The World of Henry Orient.” No: Nothing ever quite happens in “Adult World” beyond yet another oh-poor-me tale of post-collegiate struggle in the cold cruel 21st century. And that is indeed a small world.

Watch Adult World For Free On Gomovies.

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