When a movie has a word in its title such as “Spectacular,” one expects it to live up to the bar set by that name. And although The Spectacular Now is a perfectly serviceable coming-of-age story, there’s nothing about it that makes it stand out from the pack. The film is well-acted, but in the places where it should soar, it just feels hopelessly generic. I really liked all of the characters in this movie, and the dialogue was often very well-written, but it never really cohered into a narrative that I cared about. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for so long, but it was a tremendous letdown.
The Spectacular Now is the typical coming-of-age story, told from the perspective of Generic Party Animal Product of a Split Household Teenager Dealing With Teenage Problems (Miles Teller). His character, Sutter Keely, has trouble with geometry, doesn’t know his real father, has writer’s block trying to write a college admission assignment, and just got dumped by his girlfriend. Wow, could they have thrown any more things in there? I hate characters like this, where the director and writers try to come up with a typical teenager, but end up with a character whom real teenagers will simply laugh at and dismiss as a generic stereotype. And rightly so. Is it really too much to ask for some effort to be put into these creations? I’m not asking for the next Donnie Darko here (because God knows that’s pretty much impossible), but at least give us a fighting chance to like this character. Ugh.
Fortunately, he is balanced out by his co-star (Shailene Woodley), who is as far from generic as it gets. Her character, the nerdy and withdrawn girl who Sutter ends up falling for, actually feels real and her acting brings her to life. She actually reminded me of someone I know in real life, which is the sign of a realistic character. And when her character interacts with Sutter, they have legitimate screen chemistry that really starts to tie the film together. However, as the movie wears on, their story becomes more and more hamstrung and we start to lose interest. Minor things are thrown in one at a time, then (spoiler alert) WHAM! She gets hit by a car. Ten minutes later, she’s basically out of the movie, even though (spoiler alert again) she lives.
A lot of the problems with this movie could have been fixed if there was some central plot point tying all these things together, but all it really amounted to was Sutter trying to write his college application. I’m really disappointed by how weak the narrative was, because there were scenes-- such as the aforementioned car accident-- that left me in jaw-dropped, stunned silence. But even in gut-wrenching scenes like this, everything feels manipulative, shallow, and calculated. Like someone said “Hey, what’s another shitty thing we can throw in here to make people feel bad? Oh, I know! Car accidents!” Sutter also meets his deadbeat dad at one point, and although Kyle Chandler gives it his all, he never evolves his character past the typical Emotionally Unavailable Father With a Drinking Problem. Not very spectacular.
It really hurts me to say some of these things about this movie, because even though it’s often hollow and bland, a lot of it rings true. The main character doesn’t know what to do with his life, and he doesn’t care, a trait that all too many people my age have these days. I certainly subscribe to his ethos of “Living in the Now,” though, which gains the film a few points-- It’s always good when you agree with the fundamental core message of a movie. But it requires more, and this movie just doesn’t have it. I’m actually done with indie comedy/drama stuff like this now, because even the good movies of this genre leave people unsatisfied. The people who gave us The Spectacular Now also gave us 500 Days of Summer, one of the most overrated and disappointing movies ever. People seem to have run out of ways to tell romance and coming-of-age stories, so now whenever there’s the slightest alteration in the formula, the movie is hailed as “bravely original.”
Final Score for The Spectacular Now: 5/10 stars. Again, I give out this score to this movie with a heavy heart, because I really wanted to like it. But at the end of the day, it adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts, to the point where even a Bob Odenkirk cameo can’t save it. It’s such a bland and dulled-down little movie, and I can’t possibly recommend it to anyone. This seems like the kind of movie adults would watch to try and understand their kids. But until we see a coming-of-age movie actually written by teenagers, there won’t be anything very authentic in the genre.
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