Review: The Spectacular Now (2013)

Recently it feels like I’ve watched nothing but blockbusters, and so over the weekend I was after a change. After being woken up far too early on Saturday morning by my delightful, hungry cats, I curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea and hunted down something light to watch. I suddenly remembered a romcom-type film I’d actually mentioned to Jenna a while ago, which I hadn’t gotten round to watching yet, so I put on The Spectacular Now.

The Spectacular Now is a coming of age type film that leans more towards being a drama than a comedy (in my opinion at least). Our main character, Sutter (Miles Teller) is a popular, fun loving guy who lives in the moment and doesn’t plan for the future. His whirlwind romance with Cassidy (Brie Larson) sadly comes to an end but when Sutter meets Aimee (Shailene Woodley) his outlook on life starts to change.

Hopefully I’ve summed that plot up okay without butchering it! This is what I thought was a twist on the classic ‘Jock goes out with Nerd as a dare and ends up falling in love’ plot but ended up having much more depth than that. Sutter is one of the popular kids, sure, but he’s also a huge alcoholic with problems at home with his Mum. Aimee reads anime books and draws her favourite characters for fun, but she’s far from a loser.

I wouldn’t say there were twists in this film, but there were certain events I was expecting to happen, which didn’t. For example, I expected Sutter to change his mind about prom. There was one moment towards the end of the film which took me by total surprise, and my cats were glad my cup of tea was almost empty by that point as they’d have been soaked!

The Spectacular Now was a beautiful and painful story, and I would recommend it to anyone who’s a fan of ‘coming of age’ films. 

Now Jenna, I think it’s time to bring up the scoring system again. This was far better than a 7 for me, but I don’t think it’s 8 material. It’s a 7.5 for goodness sakes! For the sake of peace, I’ll stick with my Letterboxd score (which also doesn’t allow halves - are you one of the founders Jenna?) Yes, yes I am, didn't I tell you ;-) They kicked me out though for being adamant half scores are useless on a 1-10 scale!!