Shailene Woodley (left, with Miles Teller) is the brightest part of “The Spectacular Now,” a diatribe about alcoholism. (
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The teen movie “The Spectacular Now” begins like “Say Anything” but soon turns into “Drink Anything.” At its heart is whimsical, knowing, John Cusack-ish high schooler named Sutter (Miles Teller), who turns out to be the last person in the movie theater to figure out that he needs to quit boozing.
Sutter is a swaggering charmer who, after getting dumped by his girlfriend, goes on a bender and wakes up on the lawn of his opposite number, a socially awkward nerd named Aimee who becomes his tutor, friend and girlfriend. Aimee is played by Shailene Woodley — George Clooney’s bitchy, entitled daughter in “The Descendants” — who here reverses course and turns in a touching, fragile and grounded performance that marks her as a star in the making. Hollywood has not failed to take notice, casting her in the lead role in next year’s big “Hunger Games” clone, “Divergent.”
The fast-talking but increasingly insufferable Teller, however, displays little ability to modulate his performance as the movie gradually turns darker and darker, much like last year’s similarly serio-comic take on drinking, “Smashed.” That one had the same director, James Ponsoldt, and became just as tedious as it struggled to find anything to say beyond bringing us the news about alcoholism destroying lives.
