Liberal Arts

The Observer“An amusing meditation on literature and learning...” It's a simple film in its dramatic construction but complex in the ideas, experiences and emotions it plays on and is the most intelligent, truthful movie about literature, higher education and the life of the mind...

Evening Standard“Big on the feelgood and cliché factors...” Fundamentally intelligent and perceptive about a world where everything, or nothing, seems to be equally possible and before life as we know it begins in earnest...

The Independent“A bittersweet comedy of manners...” The film pays nostalgia its due, while admitting that it's possibly not the healthiest basis on which to live your life – you can get a crick in your neck from all that looking back...

The Telegraph“Naggingly overeager with its own curriculum...” The film is sunny on the surface, with an undertow of restlessness and doubt. Its themes are explored almost exclusively in one-on-one conversations between characters too clever to know what they want...

Little White Lies“Tediously sincere literary love-in...” he limps through the movie in a state of Semi-torpor, only coming to life when relaying the transcendent experience he finds so readily in literature. If his intention was to make books cool again, Radnor succeeds. But only by making cinema boring...

Guardian“Sweet-natured and high-minded...” Liberal Arts is a decent, heart-on-the-sleeve movie; it pays its audience the compliment of treating us like intelligent people...

Time Out film“Perfectly likeable...” You might find its talky touchy-feeliness on the smug side. A professor tells Jesse: ‘Put some armour around that gooey little heart.’ And the film could learn from that...

Film4“A comedy of vocational anxiety...” Liberal Arts is mainly about love and age, and is most interesting when it's about age... The film tends toward navel-gazing, but does so with such genuine wonder and sincerity that it's difficult not to join in...

Empire“A touching... tale for the big-brained and big-hearted... ” Liberal Arts... eschews foam parties and whipped-cream bikinis for something more thoughtful... evoking the romantic notion of university life, where the air is seemingly thick with possibility...

Total Film “A cute, funny indie charmer...” It’s witty and heartfelt but – perhaps a hangover from Radnor’s sitcom style – too much of the dialogue feels written down and read out rather than spur-of-the- moment spoken...