The Spectacular Now
Opens December 5, Rated M, 95 min
Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) is the life of the party, but life is starting to pass him by. High school graduation looms and he’s more interested in boozing it up than exams or university applications.
When his more ambitious girlfriend trades him in for a star athlete, Keely embarks on a record binge and wakes up on the lawn of nice girl Aimee (Shailene Woodley), who mistakes him for someone better than he is.
There’s nothing surprising about the plot to this comedy-drama. Hopeless Keely is knocked into shape by his smarter, more driven girlfriend.
There’s no shortage of stories in which women are cast as life rafts for drowning men. What distinguishes The Spectacular Now from similar tales is its execution.
Fronted by two likeable and capable young actors, this is a film that has the slick energy of great entertainment, but doesn’t shirk from the messiness of adolescence.
Keely is realistically hedonistic without the terrible, exaggerated consequence fiction usually inflicts on such indulgence. In fact, the singular sex scene here is one of the most convincing cinematic portrayals of teen sex – tender and awkward and unvarnished.
Teller does a great job as a boy who isn’t quite wise to his wounds, preferring to believe his own hype.
The ending might try to tie things up a little too neatly, but this doesn’t trample on the truth that precedes it.
Funny and sad and pleasingly real, this is one of the finest teen flicks in years.
