The Spectacular Now

The Spectacular Now, the latest movie from director James Ponsoldt is the most unsuspecting movie I have come across in a long time. It's a heart wrenching story of a young high school senior coming to grips with pending adulthood and a missing father figure. He does this by being the life of the party, and drinking to drown his pain. I was under a completely different impression about this movie from the trailer, The Spectacular Now is a far deeper and more profound film than I thought it was going to be, because of that I give it three buckets of Killer Korn.








I'm all about directors when it comes to movies, much the same way I am all about producers when it comes to music. A talented director can take a crappy script and spin it into gold, and a bad director can take a really great script and turn it into garbage. I didn't know which James Ponsoldt was because I had never seen one of his films. The Spectacular Now is just his third feature length film so I really had nothing to go on, nothing but the trailer. The trailer had me convinced that this movie was cut from the same charming cloth as was the Cameron Crowe classic Say Anything starring a very young John Cusack. Both main characters are high school seniors with really no direction or plan for the future. The only difference between the movies I felt was where Lloyd Dobler was the quiet, somewhat reserved man child trying to find a way to spend more time with Diane Court, Miles Teller's Sutter Keely is the complete opposite.

Sutter Keely appears to be a fearless, devil may care, life of the party kind of guy. He has a little job in a local haberdashery, he has a car, and he had a cool girlfriend. His girlfriend Cassidy, played by Brie Larson felt that she wasn't going to live up to her potential with Sutter in her life, so she went for the upgrade. Sutter is doing his best to pretend that the break-up isn't really bothering him and decides to get wasted. The next morning he's found on a strangers front lawn by Aimee, played by Shailene Woodley. Aimee knows all about Sutter, he's her Diane Court, he's the cool kid who's one of the most popular in school. Aimee meanwhile is Sutter's Lloyd Dobler, a shy misfit but incredibly charming and ridiculously cute. They develop a bond due to Aimee tutoring Sutter in geometry and the two eventually fall for each other.

Sutter has a bad relationship with his mother Sara, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and an indifferent one with his sister Holly, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Sutter is looking for a father figure, even going as far to ask his boss to adopt him since he believes his mother kicked his father Tommy, played by Kyle Chandler out of the house for some reason. Sara won't give Sutter any contact information that would allow him to see his dad, but his sister does. That's when the movie takes on a deeper and more profound tone. It's when you think Sutter may finally wake up and get his act together. Not only does he not, but the movie takes an ever darker more tragic turn.

The Spectacular Now morphs into a Good Will Hunting type of feel towards the end, which if at any time you can emulate Good Will Hunting I say do it. The endings are eerily similar in that regard so if you recall Hunting's end then you have a pretty good idea where this movie will take you. Cinematographer Jess Hall captures this gut punch of a film brilliantly at times, and at others not so much. There are a few moments of confusion but overall it was a job well done. The score by Rob Simonsen however is absolutely perfect. It's easy and sparse, and it hits all the right tones of light and dark. Usually in movies like these, you have the urge to want to grab the kid and smack some sense into him, not here. Sutter is the kind of kid you want to hug and let him know that it will be okay, and the most you can hope for is that he'll believe you. See The Spectacular Now and I'll see you in the theater.