Characters who just can't let go.
Alexis Bledel plays the annoyingly named Ryden, a recent college grad who realizes that sometimes life doesn't work out the way you'd think. Except she's basically still playing Rory, with the hard-nosed determination and similar personality, but it's like that season where Rory kind of goes nuts and helps Logan steal a yacht. And Zach Gilford sure tried real hard, but his character is basically a clone of Saracen, a smart, quiet, thoughtful kid who basically gets his dream, but has issues with girls/parents and what not. The only really difference is that Adam is a singer instead of an artist. I know that they probably just take what they are offered, but showing a little bit of range would be appreciated. You'd be wise to just watch DVDs of their shows instead.

Underused cast of adults.
Carol Burnett is in this. Comedy legend, Carol! Burnett! And the script only allows her one laughable line, and the rest of her scenes are just predictable jokes about a needy grandmother trying to plan her own funeral and whatnot. She freakin' works the hell out of the little she's given, but it is more than this movie deserves. Michael Keaton as Ryden's father could have been anyone, he's a dopey man-child who is still looking for the get-rich scheme that will help him do more with his life than selling suitcases. That oddball dad would have been a good leading role for him, but he's just an accessory here. Character actors Jane Lynch and J.K.Simmons play parental units to Ryden and Adam respectively, but there is no depth to either of these roles. Lynch is saddled with the mom role and little sarcasm, and Simmons is barely there as Adam's widowed father who wants his kid to have a good life. Why cast such talented people if you aren't even going to use them properly?

Overused plot devices.
Naturally, given that it has rom-com elements, there's a lot of longing looks from Adam who has an unrequited crush on Ryden, who in turn has the hots for an older guy who lives next door (Rodrigo Santoro). He's attractive, Adam's the boy next door, obviously Ryden screws Adam over by forgetting about him the second there's eye-candy to look at. Then Adam ignores her and gets a life, and she has to give up her dreams in order to find true love. It's just every thing you've ever seen before in this love triangle and it's not handled well, or in a new way, at all, so that the cliched ending feels undeserved. In addition to the romantic part of Ryden's life, she's also got a bitter rival Jessica (played by the remarkably deep-voiced Catherine Reitman, who comes off as a good ten years older than Bledel) who steals her job and makes her feel bad about herself, but then gets her comeuppance in the end. Original!

It tries too hard to be hip, but not hard enough to be real.
Why did they need to give Ryden a vlog? And why did said vlog (which is the most unrealistic looking thing ever) take up the beginning of the movie and then never, ever get mentioned again? She looks for jobs via newspaper want ads and seems not to understand how the world works, which in this day and age, a college student should be more savvy about, and when her car gets totaled by a delivery truck, she doesn't even think to write down the name emblazoned on the side of it, or its license plate number, or snap a photo with her phone. She also goes looking for an apartment, picks out a massive place (which is way cheaper than it actually would be in Los Angeles) and somehow thinks she'll be able to rent it without employment verification or a non-bouncing check? Where did this strangely named girl come from? Certainly not the suburbs of Los Angeles like she's supposed to.

Random plotlines that come out of nowhere and go nowhere.
Hot neighbor has a cat that annoys Ryden's father. Ryden's dad runs over the cat (in a very Clark Griswold sort of way), which I think is supposed to be comical, but really just a roundabout way for Ryden and hot neighbor to get together. There's one of those rotating pretzel cases in the kitchen (filled with medication) that is never acknowledged. Ryden's younger (unnecessary) brother is obsessed with building a box-car for a big race, which is out-dated and just filled up 15 minutes with unnecessary fodder. Dad gets himself arrested at one point for selling phony belt buckles, and everyone (even grandma) sits around the police station overnight, and then he gets bailed out and that's it. Hot neighbor is an infomercial director (Fred Armisen's guacamole-loving guy was one of the better things about this film) but when we finally get to see him do something, aside from leering at Ryden, he just decides to quit for no damned good reason. This whole movie is filled with a bunch of damned quitters.

The script is forgettable and is just a bunch of strung together scenes that someone somewhere thought might be entertaining, but it runs together like a recent episode of SNL sketches (mostly boring) that don't really relate to each other. Except someone decided to add this pseudo plot to it, when they'd have done better just letting Armisen make infomercials about guacamole all day, and giving Carol Burnett a starring role as his producer or something.

Did you see it? If so, what did you think?