The not-so-fine 'Art of Getting By'

Anyone who has been a teenager comes to grips with the sad fact that what once seemed like profound suffering was just pouting, and what felt like the weight of the world was only a backpack. Nothing brings it all home like "The Art of Getting By," in which erstwhile child-star Freddie Highmore attempts the always perilous transition to adult roles as a creative genius trapped in the body of a love-starved New York City teenager. Very little of what George does substantiates said genius, but he talks a good game, refuses to do his homework because of a "Bartleby the Scrivener"- style aversion to compliance, and falls in love, for little apparent reason, with Sally (Emma Roberts), who is bound to break his heart.

Writer-director Gavin Weisen tries to get some traction out of his characters' casual drinking, cruising of nightclubs and musings on mortality, but it's a soulless exercise, helped not the least by Highmore and Roberts, who are, at best, unctuous. Someone in the film industry seems convinced that these two are the hope of a new generation. In "The Art of Getting By" (which premiered as "Homework" earlier this year at Sundance and apparently has changed its name to throw Googlers off the trail), they seem like its curse.

Perhaps the most off-putting thing about "Art" is Highmore's performance, which lacks the naturalism he had as a younger kid ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") and is so mannered it's distracting. But not, one has to observe, from much.