That Awkward Moment

First time writer-director Tom Gormican makes a big mistake by having That Awkward Moment be about three best friends, when two of them would have sufficed.  Of the three main characters, I liked two of them, and found one of them to be an insufferable jerk.  The problem that stems from this is that the jerk is the main character, and the one I think we're supposed to identify with the most.  This isn't really a bad movie, and it even has a few laughs in it.  I just couldn't get past the main character.

The character who gave me so much trouble is Jason, who is played by former teen heartthrob, Zac Efron, with a certain smugness that made me hate him the moment I laid eyes on him.  Jason is the kind of guy who builds his life around bar hopping, one night stands, and finding ways to get out of a committed relationship.  Nothing exactly new.  But Jason takes it to very ugly levels when he gets involved with a sweet young woman named Ellie (Imogen Poots).  He treats her so bad throughout the whole film, we start to wonder what she sees in him.  When she takes him to her apartment for sex, he misinterprets things he finds lying around her bedroom, and mistakes her for a hooker.  He even calls her that to her face the next time they meet.  Most women would probably dump the twit right there, but Ellie, after being understandably mad for a little while, gives him another chance.  They start dating, and things seem to be going great.  Even her parents start to like him.  Then her father dies, and he doesn't even bother to support her, or show up for the funeral, instead deciding to mope around about how nobody understands him.

Of course, the ending of the movie hangs on whether or not Ellie can forgive him again, and whether she will join him at their special meeting place after he gives a heartfelt apology to her in front of a crowd of people.  All I could ask myself is why would Ellie even consider forgiving him?  He's self-centered, he's crude, and he never seems to care about Ellie as much as she does about him.  Playing such a conceited character, and still managing to have the audience get behind him is a difficult feat for any actor to pull off.  Unfortunately, Zac Efron isn't a good enough actor to do so.  He comes across as being much too proud of himself, and seriously seems to be wondering why people don't like him when he does something terrible.  Even when he's trying to win her back near the end, it doesn't seem as sincere as it should.  The thing is, I liked the character of Ellie, and I liked the performance by Imogen Poots (an up and coming British actress, who does a good job of hiding her accent here to play an American).  I just wished she had been written to be bright enough to realize that she could do so much better than this guy.

I mentioned that there were two other main characters that I did like.  Those would be Jason's two best friends, Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan).  If the movie had been just about them and expanded their roles, I probably would have liked it more.  Like Jason, they are both dealing with their own romantic problems.  Early in the film, Mikey comes home from work at the hospital to learn that his wife is leaving him for her lawyer.  This event is actually what kicks off the plot, resulting in the three guys vowing to stay single, only to have each of them find it a hard promise to keep.  Mikey meets a girl at a bar who seems really nice and interested in him, but he unwisely tries to patch things up with his ex-wife when she shows up at his job, and tells him she's been thinking about him a lot.  Once again, Mikey seems like a likable guy, and Michael B. Jordan is solid in the role.  He just hasn't been written to have enough smarts to realize his ex is stringing him along.

As for Daniel, his romantic predicament begins when he starts to develop genuine feelings for his friend, Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis).  Up to now, he's used her as a wing man to help pick up other women in bars.  But over time, they've started to grow close, and start seeing each other in a different light.  Everything would be okay, but naturally, Daniel has to say the wrong thing, upset her, and even create a rift between him, Jason and Mikey.  I think you're beginning to sense a pattern here.  That Awkward Moment has some good ideas, but hasn't been written smart enough.  The characters act solely to the needs of the plot, so they never seem like real people.  If Jason comes across as a selfish jerk, than Mikey and Daniel come across as nice guys who just do really stupid things.  The thing is, these are supposed to be smart people.  Mikey is a doctor, and Jason and Daniel are supposed to be brilliant artists who work together designing book covers that everybody loves, yet looked to me like something that would earn a B-grade in a high school art class.

This is the kind of movie you wish you could rewrite as you are watching it.  Make the characters smarter, more honest, more real, and not slaves to contrivances, and you'd really have something here.  Maybe strengthen the roles of the women in these guys' lives, so they could seem smarter, too.  It's obvious what Gormican is trying to do with his screenplay, which is to turn romantic comedy cliches on their heads by showing them from the point of view of the guys.  It's a good idea, but it doesn't pan out, because he doesn't really change anything.  He's basically giving us all the stuff we're used to in mediocre romantic comedies, only changing the sex of the main characters.  Also, instead of making any intelligent comments into dating and relationships, the script far too often goes for vulgar toilet humor.  I have nothing against vulgar jokes in a romantic comedy, as long as they're funny, and far too often, That Awkward Moment misses.  Although, to be fair, the sight gag about trying to use the toilet after popping Viagra is the first laugh out loud moment I've had at the movies this year.

There are some laughs to be had here, and the movie never offends.  I just wanted a more likable lead character, and for everybody to wise up a little bit.  I don't know why That Awkward Moment decided to play it so dumb.  You would think filmmakers would realize that audiences like to see people up on the screen who are at least half as smart as they are.

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