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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 27 December 2013
This article is a review of THAT AWKWARD MOMENT.
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“I was going to make you wait too, then I realised I’m a dude,” Jason (Zac Efron) to Ellie (Imogen Poots)
A romantic-comedy conundrum: Can the central relationship be salvaged after the guy refuses to attend the funeral of his girl’s father? Such a quandary reverberates as the curtains close on THAT AWKWARD MOMENT. Capsizing the endeavour, such a douchey moment by the lead is unable to be ignored. Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) not being there for Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige) during parental illness can be excused in the sublime SUBMARINE thanks to two factors:
1. They are only 16, at school, compared to the mid-twenty-somethings here.
2. Oliver’s character has a decent excuse for distraction: He is attempting to avert his parents’ divorce.
Being a cruddy human being is the only conclusion to be drawn from Jason. (Efron’s dead-eyed performance doesn’t help either.) The title could refer to the awkwardness of having your principal player be a total [choose derogatory epithet of your preference].
A romantic-comedy conundrum: Can the central relationship be salvaged after the guy refuses to attend the funeral of his girl’s father? Such a quandary reverberates as the curtains close on THAT AWKWARD MOMENT. Capsizing the endeavour, such a douchey moment by the lead is unable to be ignored. Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) not being there for Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige) during parental illness can be excused in the sublime SUBMARINE thanks to two factors:
1. They are only 16, at school, compared to the mid-twenty-somethings here.
2. Oliver’s character has a decent excuse for distraction: He is attempting to avert his parents’ divorce.
Being a cruddy human being is the only conclusion to be drawn from Jason. (Efron’s dead-eyed performance doesn’t help either.) The title could refer to the awkwardness of having your principal player be a total [choose derogatory epithet of your preference].
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Comparing THAT AWKWARD MOMENT to SUBMARINE is just the beginning. Echoes of other, better, movies thrum off this charmless bromance rom-com. Jason, Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan) have been friends since university. Divorce is on the horizon for the latter, whose wife has been cheating on him. Jason and Daniel are male-floozies playing the field. Mikey’s marital woes are the catalyst for a buddy pact to remain single. Of course anyone in the audience who has seen a movie before will guess the destination. Predictability undermines an already shaky story. Spinelessness to cruelty are the personality trait modes dialled to. SUPERBAD somehow made those characteristics engage. Writer-director Tom Gormican hasn’t crafted a movie where we care about the protagonists’ tedious learning curves. Someone should have sat him down CLOCKWORK ORANGE-stylee in front of SWINGERS. Even the end credit goofs montage is mostly unfunny; Jackie Chan being broken before our eyes in the POLICE STORY outtake reel is less excruciating to watch. The title could refer to the awkwardness of ineptitude.
Watching women being mistreated for 90-odd minutes in the guise of a comedy is pretty grim. Thinking Ellie is a prostitute, Jason bails after their first night. Nice. Occasional chortles at crassness lubricate an otherwise uncomfortable experience. Seguing from men behaving badly shenanigans to mawkish romance, there’s a sequence where the central couple break into the well-to-do New York private Gramercy Park. Did no one mention to the makers there’s a certain mega-famous 1990s genre flick called NOTTING HILL containing a similar moment? The title could refer to the awkwardness of déjà vu, where you’ve seen everything done with more accomplishment elsewhere.
There is being fearful of commitment, and there’s being a c-bomb. Redemption for these a-holes is too little, too late. If you want to watch the adventures of an unlikeable Manhattanite, swivel yourself instead toward the masterly INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS.
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