Director James Ponsoldt’s drama is very much a film that takes its pages from John Hughes’ teen oriented films about change and growing up. “The Spectacular Now” is much in the arena of “Breakfast Club,” and “Say Anything” where what we once thought we understood is actually false, and we eventually reach a fork in the road where we must decide to move on, or stay perpetually stunted by our environment. Director Ponsoldt introduces us to the destructive part of our lives that keep us from accepting growth and adulthood, and he just happens to be our protagonist Sutter.
“The Spectacular Now” doesn’t embrace any false promises or quick fix happy endings. It’s an adult and often dark look at a young man doomed to nowhere, who has to find a way to break his cycle of pain and alcoholism before his life has passed him by. The problem becomes that character Sutter is never quite sure if he wants to grow beyond the pitfalls of his distant father’s life of drinking, and wallowing in bars. Sometimes it’s much easier to lie down and accept what may come, than try to change our perceived destinies. Sutter is a young man that’s had the fight taken out of him long before we’re ever introduced to him in “The Spectacular Now.” He’s a young man that enjoys partying, drinking, sex, and is almost never without a buzz.
As with every other young man of his ilk, he has potential and opportunities presenting themselves, but Sutter is faced with deciding if he wants to grow in to a man with responsibilities and something to account for, or if he wants to remain in his life where he only has to answer for him. Director Ponsoldt paints adulthood and the inevitability of a life of responsibility as something of a dire ending for Sutter, and we gradually watch much of the elements in his life he once deemed reliable, suddenly change against his will. Especially his once loyal girlfriend Cassidy decides to leave Sutter, and embrace the massive change in her life. Once Sutter meets Aimee, the insecure but beautiful young student in his school, Sutter quickly becomes a protagonist difficult to empathize with.
Sutter finds consolation in the sweet and unassuming Aimee, a young and naive girl with a large future ahead of her. Their blossoming romance and relationship becomes a ploy for Sutter to find company in his misery and his depiction as a protagonist will test audiences ability to tolerate his subtle but destructive acts. Especially when we’re given an insight in to Aimee’s world, viewing her as a girl anxious for companionship, who is headed down the very dead end Sutter’s own mother did. “The Spectacular Now” doesn’t sugar coat much of the dynamic between Sutter and Aimee, depicting him as a very intrusive and potentially destructive element of her life that she’s much too idyllic to recognize. And this becomes ever more clear as he injects elements of his own world in to her own, including alcohol, parties, and his own dysfunctional family.
Shailene Woodley is fantastic and utterly heart wrenching as the wide eyed Aimee who can’t recognize that Sutter could ruin her life. Miles Teller is also great as the flawed and often grating Sutter who has to decide what he wants in his life, as everything and everyone surrounding him grows and moves on to bigger and better. “The Spectacular Now” doesn’t practice cloying happy endings, or one dimensional characters, and instead draws flawed and occasionally unlikable individuals struggling to find a path that will grant them. It’s about uncertainties and the terror of what can come around the bend. “The Spectacular Now” is fantastic and succeeds in pinpointing that part of us that is terrified to grow up, and examines the inherent fear of what we’ll grow in to.
In Stores January 14th! Buy It Here or You Can Stream It Online!