I like this movie quite a bit, but why do people keep lying about it? 

It’s clear that the problem with this movie is that Bradley Cooper—lead actor, director, co-writer, co-producer—has pushed himself so far into its center that he doesn’t seem to realize he’s not actually supposed to be its star. Buddy, you’re pretty much here to be a tragedy—not even a heroic fuckup, really, but a painful liability. And so many of the film’s other perceived flaws—anti-popness, especially—proceed…

Good acting. But. 

If you’re a student at the kind of high school from which kids regularly graduate to attend Stanford and Harvard and Georgetown and Yale and even get recruited to bypass the whole college scam and start working at Google immediately, and if these other kids manage to find ways to be social and deviant while doing the work it takes to get into those schools, are you really going to think you have to sacrifice being social…