Pattinson vs. Radcliffe--Who'll have the better "later" career?

Watching How to Be, a daft mirthless mess of a coming-of-age "finding oneself" comedy that Robert Pattinson made just before Twilight, I couldn't help but think of his Harry Potter co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, and ponder the fates of the two most adored film pop toy boys of our day.

Which among the two will have staying power in the movies? Will either of them be able to transcend those Teen Vogue/People cover stories and carve out a corner of permanent movie stardom? Radcliffe has ventured onto the stage, tried a non-Potter movie, found a little acclaim beyond the Hogwarts door. Pattinson, though, may have a much rougher time of it.

How to Be is one of those movies that's like your bete noir on the basketball court -- that one team that exposes every single one of your weaknesses. The film has him playing a London lad (David Mamet's Rebbecca Pidgeon plays his mom, seemingly an American) who aspires to be a poet, a singer-songwriter. He performs these morose and only slightly witty ditties that sound like Phoebe from Friends' outtakes. He wants to get it together, or failing that, find somebody to blame. When he stumbles across a Canadian self-help guru, he resolves to spend some inheritance from an uncle and bring the guy (Powell Jones, not remotely funny enough) over as his live-in life coach.

Hilarity doesn't ensue. Pattinson, surrounded by a charisma-starved supporting cast, is a low-heat performer. He simmers well enough. Forced to emote, sell a joke or make a situation funny by his reaction, he's lost. And that mop of hair isn't all that flattering once you've stopped piling it high, giving it highlights and set it against a Kabuki-pale face. Seeing this non-Twilight outing, I understand more of his performance in Twilight. It wasn't Catherine Hardwicke's direction that had him so laughably pouty, smoldering and doe-eyed. That's the dude's range.
A few amusing scenes, a lot of whispered wit (he has a tendency to swallow his lines, as if waiting for a close-up where he can do all the work with his eyes), casting blunders left and right -- How to Be had the makings of a cult film, a Harold & Maude or Brewster McCloud or anything by Alan Rudolph, Jim Jarmusch and their ilk. It isn't.

Well, it won an award at Strasburg, just before Twilight, but not before the Twilight-hype.
He's getting better offers since stardom came calling. but unlike Daniel Radcliffe, the jury's very much out on Pattinson's ability to do anything interesting with them.

Whose career might he emulate? Who had early stardom, struggled to cash in on it, to make good on his chances? Judd Nelson? Rob Lowe? The adjustment's going to be a rough one, I'm guessing. If he's lucky, he'll enjoy that Patrick Dempsey bounce later in life. Radcliffe I could see taking to the stage for a few years, aging past his Leo DiCaprio boyishness, and coming into his own in his mid-to-late 20s.

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