The post-grad malaise has likely affected anyone who has ever returned home after the completion of their degree, and it’s a premise that takes unto itself a whole new meaning in the wake of the present economic downturn, where the graduate market is incredibly tight for even the most able students. Combine this with the rare perspective of an Art student (a different take to The Graduate’s Benjamin Braddock, who was surely a Scientist), and you find Post Grad, a film with a solid premise that any half-decent screenwriter could have knocked out of the park, making it all the more disappointing that the end result is so calamitous.

From the moment that Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel)’s graduation ceremony is interrupted by her embarrassingly loud family, it was clear that this wouldn’t be a smooth ride. Furthermore, the film, from almost its opening scene, depicts a protagonist that’s more idiotic than sympathetic, for her naivety leads her to believe that gaining a job at her dream publishing firm will be a synch. She learns a harsh lesson when, after already writing a cheque for her dream apartment, she doesn’t get the job, and is forced to move back home with her family, led by patriarch Walter (Michael Keaton). It’s nice that Ryden is impassioned about her profession of choice, but to make such a mind-numbingly dumb choice does not set a precedent for the audience to sympathise with her, and frankly, the film would have fared better as a satire of the optimism of youth if it was going to be this sloppy.

Through and through, there’s just little positive to write home about. The half-baked romance plot, in which her old friend, Adam (Zach Gilford), pines for her while she pursues her dream job, is embarrassingly obvious, and this boy isn’t much more sympathetic because he’s so spineless and inert that most every girl would probably think of him as “too nice” or “like a brother” anyway. Meanwhile, Michael Keaton is game as usual, but it’s easy to feel embarrassed for him as the uncool dad who, in his major contribution to the picture, steps in a pile of dog crap.

The film fields out a bit of edginess later with a few death-related jokes, but the delivery falls flat because of the somewhat fluffy tone established by the opening scenes. Similarly, the pratfalls mount up, but without being very funny because the film is so schizophrenic tonally. Oh, and because the gags just aren’t very funny either.

What the film does hint at well, though, is the frustration of job hunting, and this extends not only to former students, but to the unemployed sectors as a whole. In the present period of economic strife, it’s a message that audiences should be able to easily latch onto and sympathise with, but when the characters therein are so insipidly stupid and the few knowing ideas surrounded by such poor ones, it’s easy for that message to be diluted almost entirely. The sight gags, such as the previous “dog crap” episode, do an excellent job of soiling what could have been quite a classy, clever look at the recession’s far-reaching effects (that turned out to be Up in the Air). By the time Keaton’s character runs over the neighbour’s cat (with a cringe-inducing “splat” sound effect) and a distended cat funeral is held for it, I gave up all hope. It’s as though by being crass, the filmmakers feel that they are being edgy, yet from the works of Kevin Smith to recent comedies like The Hangover, these films work because they juggle their crudeness with feral intelligence, of which Post Grad is suffering a fatal surfeit.

The dramatic elements work better in that they’re less cringe-inducing, but they’re still utterly unoriginal and feel like floor cuttings from an episode of The O.C. In the film’s dramatic crux, Ryden forgets to meet Adam for a celebratory dinner, once again reinforcing that every morsel of exposition relies on the unforgivable idiocy of the film’s protagonist. After a wealth of deus ex machina, we wind up at our conclusion, levying a dilemma that a haemorrhaging sewer rat could have seen coming a mile off, before the film hurtles towards its syrupy climax. Tack onto this a box-car race that literally comes out of nowhere and is utterly pointless, and you have a baffling film for several reasons, perhaps most prominently because director Vicky Jenson once co-directed a little-known film called Shrek that, you know, a lot of people actually liked.

The whole thing feels so disingenuous because the protagonist is such a moron, and it undoes the message it is clearly aiming for as a result. A constantly-moving tone – from serious existential drama to crude comedy – doesn’t help either, even if Alexis Bledel, Jane Lynch and Michael Keaton try their best with redundant material.