Team FYC: The Spectacular Now for Best Picture
Wednesday, November 27, 2013 at 10:00AM [Editor's Note: In this series Film Experience contributors are individually highlighting their favorite fringe Oscar contenders. Here's Deborah Lipp on The Spectacular Now.]
Dear Voters of the Academy: Think Small. I know it’s Oscar season, and I know you want to think Big Space (Gravity) and Big Epic (The Butler), but sometimes, small is beautiful. Sometimes, small is The Spectacular Now.
Consider the delicacy with which this movie sits inside the pocket of being young, and confused, and feeling alone, and makes you feel it too. Consider that Teen Romance Movie Clichés could fill an encyclopedia, and that this movie deftly steps past all of them, to arrive at an intimacy of both dialogue and unspoken moments that create a sense of presence so very rare in the movies.
The Spectacular Now has three genuinely striking performances: Its two leads (Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley) and a supporting turn by Kyle Chandler, playing disturbingly against type.
Movies about disconnected people can feel distant, but, as Aimee (Woodley) and Sutter (Teller) find each other, we feel close, and connected. With striking honesty, The Spectacular Now gives us sad and fumbling youth, the relief of having someone else there, and the painful knowledge that it isn’t enough.
Reader Comments (3)
I totally enjoyed this movie, and it had me up until it falls into one of the biggest teen movie cliches of all.
I feel like it gets a lot of credit from people for avoiding cliches by people who are ignoring a major, clunky plot point.
But then again, I thought the same thing about Perks of Being a Wallflower last year, which was actually full of typical teen tropes. I liked both movies a lot, but maybe I just don't see enough bad teen movies to fully appreciate the really great ones.
What both Perks and Spectacular Now bring to the table for me are perfect, deeply felt performances, which is all I ever really need.
It's fine but I feel like it is a performance movie and in some instances the performance carry scenes and in others the director and script just seem awkward and letting down the actors. The first dinner scene as one example. Forced awkwardness in the writing and the flask scene just felt like the after school specials I watched in High School health class.
I never read the book so I cannot speak for the flaws I found it being the problem of the book itself, but there was something a little too broad and too insistent on a sin's of the father kind of tale that felt a little too easy. I knew plenty of teens in high school who had drinking problems and there was something a little too inconsistent about how Sutter was written that made me question if the author ever knew a young alcoholic.
The performances saved the movie and I'd rather that be the focus.
Good movie, although I think not Best PIcture worthy.
I think they should campaign Shailene for supporting. She's (arguably) really not the lead in the movie... it's his story with her a very important character in that story.