Emma Roberts shines in Adult World as Amy, a wannabe poet who doesn’t want to accept the obvious: Her poetry is terrible. Instead, she chases down her poet hero, Rat Billings (a perfectly cast John Cusack), for mentorship, but gets mostly bemused scorn instead.
When Roberts and Cusack are onscreen together, it’s magical. Unfortunately, the film features a gimmicky subplot involving Amy’s employment at an adult-video store—and in these scenes, the movie feels strikingly unoriginal and old. Evan Peters is OK as the store manager, but his character could have worked just fine without the porn gimmick.
Still, Roberts and Cusack are on fire, especially during a scene in which Roberts smashes a guitar, and Cusack just slyly grins. There’s another great moment when Amy shows up drunk and demands to be deflowered, while Rat insists that such a thing won’t happen—even though it is pretty obvious he’s slept with poet groupies before. Lesser actors would’ve made this scene into a cliché, but these two totally rock.
Cusack and Roberts make the movie worth watching. If filmmakers had dropped the video-store stuff (and, consequently, changed the title), it would have been even better.
The film is available via online sources, including iTunes and Amazon.com.