Adult World (2013)

Adult World captures beautifully, and with a great deal of self-deprecating humor, what it's like to feel trapped in a place you think is too small to hold you.

Every scene featuring Amy and Rat together is a giddy marvel of kinetic energy, with Roberts and Cusack seemingly in competition to determine which of them can make their character more unsympathetic.

There’s nothing deep in this script, and the delayed romance, between real-life lovers Roberts and Evan Peters (of “American Horror Story”) sets off no sparks. The characters are sort of a grab bag of “types.”

Adult World proceeds by fits and starts, but fans of Cusack won’t want to miss his performance as the petulant poet, whose resistance is inevitably worn down by his persistent fan.

The story beats are as familiar as they come, and there are a few halfhearted stabs at redeeming Roberts’s clueless character when it would have been better to push her feeble-mindedness to Anna Faris–esque extremes.