Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World skewers the culture of liberal self-scourging.
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n intensely determined social worker played by Julianne Moore drives to work listening to equally intense classical music suggesting her utter, lifelong focus on a dramatic struggle for social justice. Then the camera pulls back to reveal the car she’s in: a pathetic, absurd, lawnmower-sized demi-car.
That’s the kind of perfect juxtaposition — funny, cutting, woefully accurate — that characterizes every smartly-designed scene in When You Finish Saving the World, the sly directorial debut of actor-writer Jesse Eisenberg. Eisenberg (who also wrote the movie, which began as a podcast) politely but devastatingly lampoons the sorts of people he grew up with …
