Post Grad, and definitely post-"The Graduate"

“Post Grad” is like “The Graduate,” without Dustin Hoffman. “Post Grad” is like “The Graduate” without Mrs. Robinson. It’s like “The Graduate” without the social commentary.

Without Simon & Garfunkel. Without “plastics.”

It’s like “The Graduate,” without “The Graduate.”

At the filmmakers were ambitious. They didn’t just stick with one movie. It’s also like “Little Miss Sunshine.”

The difference is that “The Graduate” and “Little Miss Sunshine” were funny. And, you know, good.

A comedy presumably aimed at teenage girls, “Post Grad” tells the story of Ryden Malby, who graduates from a tiny college (we only see a couple of dozen students at graduation) and is ready to take on the world. So convinced is she that she will be hired as an editor at a big publishing house that she rents an expensive loft in downtown L.A. But, obviously, she doesn’t get the job. Perhaps the publishers see, as we do if we look quickly enough, that her diploma says she has a bachelor of science in English. Bachelor of science. I wouldn’t hire her, either.

A couple of months later, she still doesn’t have a job, even though “I thought I’d be doing something amazing by now.” It’s kind of hard to sympathize with someone who thinks in those terms.

While not looking for jobs, Ryden spends her time ignoring the guy who loves her and occasionally pursuing the studly middle-aged Brazilian who lives across the street, except when she (and we) forget about him. And in a completely unrelated part of the film, she hangs out with her quirky family.

Oh, are they quirky! They’re professionally quirky. They’re strenuously quirky. And they’re played by such quirky actors as Michael Keaton (in the Greg Kinnear role, although he’s mostly riffing on the character he played in “Night Shift”), Jane Lynch (in the Toni Collette role) and Carol Burnett in a ghastly wig (in the Alan Arkin role).

The part of Ryden falls to the moderately appealing Alexis Bledel, who has spectacular blue eyes and a lot of freckles and spectacular blue eyes. You could spend the whole movie looking at those blue eyes, and we do, partly because director Vicky Jenson spends so much time focusing on them and partly because there is nothing else to watch.

Bledel talks quickly and animatedly to get across the idea that Ryden has spunk. Lots and lots of spunk. And in the immortal words of Lou Grant, I hate spunk.

Kelly Fremon’s humorless script is utterly formulaic and is not above looking to other movies for its jokes. And those are the best of the mediocre jokes. Too many of the worst ones involve Michael Keaton stepping in cat poop.

Leaving the theater, we kind of know how he feels.