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Mar 06, 2018Nursebob rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
It’s been almost forty years since I was a teenager and I never was much of a slacker. Unfortunately those two qualities seem mandatory requirements in order to enjoy Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s teenage slacker comedy-tearjerker so it’s understandable that I really wanted to dislike it. But this adolescent dramedy has a way of drawing you in despite the corny one-liners, packaged angst, and blatantly manipulative plot devices—or perhaps it is precisely these flaws that lend it a certain awkward gravitas? “This isn’t a touching romantic story…” insists main character Greg in retrospect even though Gomez-Rejon draws upon every weepy cinematic cliché from "Love Story" to "Beaches" in order to yank our heartstrings. And yet there is a certain lopsided freshness to his approach that forces us to see these kleenex moments in a different light. Perhaps it’s those doses of millennial humour—part harebrained non-sequiturs, part cynical commentary—that defuse the pathos and cause a double take. Maybe it's the loving yet ineffectual adults that reminded me of my own age—Greg’s dad (Nick Offerman!) is an intellectual dilettante; Rachel’s mom is a lonely cougar full of regrets; an outspoken history teacher is a thirty-something anarchist. Or perhaps it was the unexpectedly surreal ending, bolstered by Brian Eno’s eclectic score, that jolted me out of my middle-aged rut and made me realize that this movie speaks to a different generation than my own (nowadays I even view "The Breakfast Club" with the same sense of puzzlement—was I ever that young?) A fine cast play off each other with expert precision as Greg’s self-obsessed pessimism bounces off Earl’s urban smarts and Rachel’s angry fatalism, and Gomez-Rejon keeps the narrative flowing with energetic camerawork, a bit of animation, and some cutesy intertitles that could have been lifted from any highschool essay. Not a perfect film by any stretch, but one not afraid to wear its fresh young heart on its sophomore sleeve.