The Spectacular Now and the Invincibility of Youth

Spectacular

When I first saw the trailer for The Spectacular Now, part of me was excited, and the other part annoyed.  As soon as I saw that it was from the writers of 500 Days of Summer, I was annoyed it would be the next great  ”this is how I identify with emotions” movie for 20 year olds.  It had attractive leads with problems, who were young, whilst catchy songs played in the background.  The only way to know for sure of course, was to see it, so I did.  I am happy to report that while this is a film I think all high school and college students should see, it is not because it is Garden State or 500 Days 2.0.

Those films resonate with youth, because they are marketed to them, and seem different.  However the problem with them is they usually exist in a world that is wholly inauthentic.  The manic pixie dream girls turn the guy’s life upside down, and end up looking like remixed episodes of Dharma and Greg.  The films don’t hold up.  Why The Spectacular Now works is because it is gut-punchingly real.  The world of high school is not what you remember.  It is a lot more mundane.  This film captures that mundane element of growing up, while believing your life is more important than it is.  The films main two characters, Sutter and Amy exist in all of our high schools.  They weren’t the most popular or unpopular, but they were there.  We all had Amy’s and Sutter’s at school.  Sutter is your run of the mill funny kid, who does not apply himself and is moderately well liked.  Amy is your run of the mill smart girl who doesn’t really talk alot and isn’t all that well known.  In less deft hands, this could have been She’s All That, an excellent, albeit entirely unrealistic depiction of high school social politics.  Miles Teller [Sutter] and Shailene Woodley [Amy] are serious strengths of this film.

I do not want to get into the details specifically of WHY the movie is gut-punchingly real as I mentioned, because I feel it will serve you better to just see it, but two of the main ideas of the film that are highlighted through our main characters are the invincibility of youth, and alcoholism.  Look back on some of the decisions you made 10-15 years ago.  If you are the typical Rookerville demo, you were an idiot then.  You did things you’ll shudder at now, and you did them without a single care for what will happen next.  That is on display in full force here.  I found myself laughing at comments made by Sutter, as they appeared to be ripped from my past.  Hand in hand with that, the alcohol consumption/abuse clearly affects the decisions many of our characters make in the film, specifically Sutter, and his father, played by Kyle Chandler, who goes a bit against type.  You can see what alcohol abuse has done to them at their separate life stages, but without getting preachy, the film shows you how it negatively affects them.

The last really interesting thing I noticed in this movie is the idea that a relationship does not always make you better.  Sometimes they make you worse.  When Sutter and Amy get together at first things seem really great.  They both bring out these really good things in each other, but as time wears on, we see one of them become a worse version of themself because of their significant other.  We’ve all seen that couple in our lives that started out awesome, but as time wore on, one of them becomes a mini-me of the other, having shed all of their good traits in favor of these new unfavorable ones.  I think its brave for a movie about high schoolers to tackle these types of topics tastefully.  Even the instances of sex are not sensationalized.  For a movie about so many big ideas in a small town, it always comes off as rather muted.  The direction by James Ponsoldt is solid across the board.  He draws some excellent performances out of younger actors and lets them do the heavy lifting.  The supporting cast is also great, but I get the feeling a few of the characters were edited down, as the movie ran at a pretty short 90 mins.

At the end of the day, they don’t make enough good movies about real things for young people, or hell, anyone to see these days.  This is one of them.  However, it is NOT 500 Days of Summer, so if you are expecting the cute followup to that, you will be sorely disappointed.

8/10

About Russ Stevens

Russ Stevens is an editor and writer at Rookerville and a guidance counselor at Nyack HS. He mostly writes about either loving or hating things. In his spare time, he performs Improv comedy with his troupe Priest and The Beekeeper and is a co-producer of their monthly variety show Pig Pile. He loves all the New York sports teams that are historically bad, and he hates lateness more than anything in the world.

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