428. The Spectacular Now (2013)

Starring: Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Kyle Chandler

Director: James Ponsoldt

Running Time: 95 mins

The Spectacular Now is an American film about two teenagers who, although they have vastly different personalities and outlooks on life, are drawn together into a relationship.

I have to say that I was quite disappointed with this film. It’s got a vaguely similar premise to Flipped, a film that I adored, as in the fact that two very different teenagers are drawn to each other, however I just couldn’t get that emotional feeling that was evident in Flipped.

Not to compare the two, they’re completely unrelated films, but I would say that this is a lot more complicated and in-depth than that. There is a fascinating underlying story about the characters, and whether living in the now or looking to the future is the way to lead a fulfilled life, which was interesting in itself, but amongst the atmosphere of the film, it really didn’t get to me at all.

That was definitely one of the things that I was disappointed by in this film: the atmosphere. You can see quite clearly that this is trying to dodge your average cliché coming-of-age film, by being more meaningful, however throughout the movie, it switches quite dramatically between heartwarming to just fun to gentle again and then to overly serious.

There aren’t any comedic elements to this film either. I would like to say that it was an entertaining film to watch, but it really wasn’t. If it weren’t for a more interesting subtext that was intriguing to look into, this could have been a lot worse.

Something else that saves this is the performances by pretty much everyone. The two main characters’ contrasts are shown clearly, which contributes to their rather unorthodox relationship, and that was also quite an interesting line to follow, but on the whole, this film wasn’t really engaging, entertaining or emotional enough to grab me, so that’s why it gets a 6.7.