Post Grad (2009, U.S.)

This was a cute little movie. Alexis Bledel is a girl who has just graduated with an English degree and wants to get her dream job at her dream publishing house. She doesn't, and she has to deal with unemployment. Meanwhile, her best friend is in love with her and she starts fooling around with her much older Brazilian neighbor. So she loses her friend, another important thing in her life.

I thought it was both laugh-out-loud funny and touching. Michael Keaton as her father and Carol Burnett as her grandmother were especially hilarious. Without the comedy and the romance, her post grad life felt like a mix of my post-college and post-grad school experiences, which is probably part of why I liked it so much. I think any college graduate can relate.

Not many comedies can impress upon the viewer the important things in life—family, love, hard work, being happy with who you are and what you do. All that and a few laughs too. Good stuff.

Rating: 4.0

The Last Song (2010, U.S.)

Much better than Nights in Rodanthe, didn't hold a candle to The Notebook or Message in a Bottle. Then again, this wasn't my favorite Sparks book either.

A very troubled teenage girl and her brother get shipped off to her dad's for the summer. There she finds her first love and reestablishes her relationship with her father.

The casting was pretty good on this one. Miley Cyrus wasn't that bad, Greg Kinnear was good, the boyfriend was sexy, and the kid who played the younger brother was awesome. I've seen some great child actors recently, it seems.

I think this was very true to the novel, because it too tried to take on too much at once. The combination of the dying father-troubled daughter story and the first love story was just too much. I think the movie did a pretty good, maybe better, job of showing how the girl falling in love helped her open her heart to her father more too.

It was sweet and I was sobbing at the end. Nicholas Sparks, what more can I say?

Rating: 3.5