Mickster Movie Review - "The Spectacular Now" (2013) ***

     I'm piggybacking on The Beer Man's review of this film, which is just below. I saw it just after him and I have some of the same feelings he has, so I won't go into things too deep. The Spectacular Now is I movie I will need to watch again down the road as I have a feeling it may be better than I'm giving it credit for. That may not make a lot of sense, but follow along with me just a minute. I feel like if you are a pretty regular movie watcher, from time to time you will run into these spurts where you tend to watch the same kind of movie over and over again. It may happen accidentally, or intentionally, but we seem to have those times where everything we watch is similar. In the last half year or so, I feel like I have watched more "coming-of-age type" films than I have previously. And most of them have been great, or at the least decent. I think of films such as The Way, Way Back, Mud, Kings of Summer, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Short Term 12 and now The Spectacular Now. All this plus I have recently re-watched Say Anything with my fiancee who had never seen that. I think I may need to back off this genre for a bit! That's what I mean when I say I need to watch the movie again, after a little time, because I feel there is more here than I am giving it credit for.

      The story is fairly simple, and Justin touched on it earlier, but basically it's about a high school student, Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), who is a charmer and the life of the party. He has a tendency to drink a little too much, a trait that we learn affects his father also, and after a drunken binge one night, he falls asleep in the yard of another student, Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley), your typical "good girl". The two become friends, and an attraction slowly builds between the two opposites, leading to an unlikely relationship that almost seems destined to hurt one or both parties involved. If there is a reason to see this film, it is for the perfomance of Shailene Woodley. She is one of the brightest young actresses going today and I have a feeling we will see her on the Oscar stage before too long. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for her brilliant performance as George Clooney's eldest daughter in The Descendants. She is equally great here and is supported by fine performances from Kyle Chandler, Brie Larson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

     My hesitation on the film comes primarily from the lead, Miles Teller, as Sutter. I don't know why, but this guy just didn't connect with me. I know what they were trying to go for with the character, but the actor seemed wrong for the part. Judging from other reviews of the film, I seem to be in a minority on this, but it is what it is. I enjoyed Teller in a role he had a couple of years ago in a movie called Rabbit Hole. I don't know why, he just seemed so unlikable in this role. His character is one you are supposed to pull for, and instead I just wanted to punch him in the nose.

      With all of the negative talk it may seem like I hated this film, but that's not the case at all. I do give it a slight recommend and it is worth watching. I just wanted a lot more out of it that I didn't get. Maybe time will be good to it.

Mickster