Behaving Badly (2014)

Somewhere in this tangled mess of debauchery and off-kilter, almost deliberately offensive humour is a decent movie. At its best and most promising, Behaving Badly plays like an ultra-quirky, purposefully black-hearted look at the standard coming-of-age tale we’ve seen too many times before. But it never really knows when to dial back its strange and frequently off-putting humour, resulting in a film that frustrates as much as it amuses.

Rick (Nat Wolff) is a self-absorbed, close to morally degenerate teenager growing up in a complicated household: his boozed-up mom Lucy (Mary Louise Parker) is barely coherent from day to day, and his deadbeat dad Joseph (Cary Elwes) only stays married to avoid paying alimony. Even as he navigates a huge crush on Nina (Selena Gómez), the school’s resident goody-two-shoes, he embarks on an ill-advised affair with the sexually voracious Pamela (Elisabeth Shue), mom to his strange best friend Billy (Lachlan Buchanan).

The film is every bit as complicated and filthy as its title suggests, its characters dealing in drugs, alcohol and sex with next to no moral compunction. Actually, that’s not its problem. These scenes are riddled with a grim humour, and work best when played loudly and ridiculously – as they frequently are. And so there are moments when Rick receives counselling from Saint Lola, the patron saint of aimless teenagers (played in a neat Oedipal twist by Parker); or when he must cut a deal with slimy strip-club boss Jimmy (Dylan McDermott) to score backstage passes for a Josh Groban concert. The film is almost brave in how determinedly it sinks into the most depraved of narrative depths.

But it’s hard to shake the feeling that writer-director Tim Garrick lets his own crazy creation get the best of him. He packs the film with knowing, self-aware touches – Rick frequently speaks straight to the camera, as the title character did in iconic teen flick Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – but achieves very little in the way of emotional payoff and insight. As a result, when his deliberately peculiar film heads down the road to redemption, it pretty much collapses on itself. It’s hard to believe in any of Garrick’s characters making good, when they’ve otherwise been portrayed as so horribly bad that they barely register as real human beings.

At least Garrick’s cast seems to be in on the joke. Wolff is an affable if somewhat opaque lead, largely outshone by Buchanan (delightfully weird) and the adult actors – all of whom seem to be only too pleased to have been let off the leash and told to behave, well, pretty much as badly as they like. Parker, Shue and McDermott, in particular, play the taboo-happy comedy with relish, committing so fearlessly to their parts that watching them in action becomes part of the joy of the film.

It’s unfortunate, then, that they’re doing such good work in so awkward a movie. Behaving Badly is not for the faint of heart or morally conservative, for a start. But even those who are willing to take a walk on the wild side with their teen raunch-coms will find themselves disappointed by the film, which flirts tantalisingly with the dark side but winds up being both too strange and too predictable to really work in the end.

Basically: Initially promising, this film soon feels like it’s punishing its audience – and itself – for its bad behaviour.

The Fault In Our Stars (2014)

These days, young-adult fiction is everywhere: dystopian stories of moody youths undergoing strife, war and heartache, as in The Hunger Games or Divergent, are dominating the bestseller lists and popping up in cineplexes. What’s so unusual about The Fault In Our Stars, an adaptation of John Green’s best-selling novel, is that it locates the dystopia and war within the bodies of its teenage protagonists. These kids aren’t battling an evil regime or fascist overlords; they’re struggling to survive against the merciless onslaught of cancer. Green’s book is a bit of an odd beast: touching but manipulative, genuine and fake, all at the same time. The resulting film, being hugely faithful to its source material, thus manages to pull off the same curious trick of overwhelming and underwhelming the viewer, often in the same breath.

Hazel (Shailene Woodley) has been living with – or dying of – terminal cancer for years. Her concerned parents (Mike Trammell: under-used; and Laura Dern: wonderfully sympathetic) fuss around her constantly, wanting her to live what life is left to her after the treatments and exhaustion have taken their toll. And so Hazel attends a support group for kids stricken with cancer. One day, she meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a charming, sweet kid whose remission came at the price of a leg. They share an immediate connection, one that deepens as they bond over Hazel’s favourite book: An Imperial Affliction, penned by reclusive author Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe). Knowing how much it means to Hazel, Augustus resolves to get her the answers she seeks about the novel – even if they have to travel all the way to Amsterdam to get them.

If that sounds like a recipe for melodrama, that’s because it is. There’s plenty of that in store, of course, because these kids are dealing with the worst and most traumatic of experiences, at a time when they should be healthy and carefree. But the film, as did the novel, does a pretty good job of maintaining a spark of cheeky life amidst all the doom and gloom. Hazel and Augustus trade banter as easily as they do insults, and the affection that grows between them is as entertaining as it is affecting. Woodley and Elgort share a gentle chemistry that works very well, whether they’re in the throes of first love or battling through the trenches of disease side by side. Their friendship with Isaac (Nat Wolff), the boy who loses his sight to eye cancer and his girlfriend to her self-absorption, is wonderfully bittersweet too – together, the trio ride the lows of Isaac’s depression, and the highs of his tiny moment of vengeance.

But, for everything that feels raw and real in the film, The Fault In Our Stars also comes across as overly plotted. Hazel and Augustus are designed specifically to break your heart and swell your tear ducts, which is why their relationship can sometimes feel painstakingly constructed. They are, quite literally, made for each other, which weighs down rather than frees the story in which they find themselves. Their interactions with the troubled, prickly Van Houten also lose some impact in the move away from the page, where his words, ideas and general depravity can take fuller form. In the film, Dafoe ensures that Van Houten remains tough to like, but the character’s rougher edges are sanded away in a half-hearted bid for redemption.

Ultimately, the film – which lifts entire lines and scenes wholesale from Green’s text – triumphs and suffers where the book does. The relationship between Hazel and Augustus, when stripped to its core, is a heart-breaking/warming account of a soul-deep connection that matters all the more for its tragic brevity. There’s a lot of welcome, saddening depth in the film, too, about the everyday heroism of children being forced to live on the brink of death everyday. But this is also a deliberately manipulative tale, one that hinges on an awkward twist (present in both book and film) that practically dares you not to care and cry about what’s going on. It’s an effective tactic, for the most part, but one that doesn’t earn so much as exhaust its audiences’ affections.

Basically: A very faithful adaptation of an affecting but troubled novel.

Stuck In Love (2013)

It’s tempting to think that writers – particularly novelists – have greater insights into the human condition: they are somehow wiser, one might think, since they can so beautifully articulate the grief and glory of their characters and stories. The charming if inconsequential Stuck In Love makes a good argument to the contrary. Writers, the film seems to suggest, are actually more prone to suffer the failings and foibles of romance.

Bill Borgens (Greg Kinnear) has spent the last three years waiting for his remarried ex-wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) to come back to him. In the meantime, he remains stuck in a holding pattern: unable to write anything new, he engages in semi-meaningless trysts with his married neighbour Tricia (Kristen Bell). Bill has raised his daughter Sam (Lily Collins)  and son Rusty (Nat Wolff) to be writers themselves, but the former remains scarred by her mother’s perceived betrayal and the latter lacks life experience.

There isn’t much in the way of dazzling or original insight in Stuck In Love: writer-director Josh Boone’s film is less realistic human drama than wish-fulfilment fairy tale, albeit one with a few darker moments sprinkled effectively (but sparingly) throughout. That being said, the Borgens family’s romantic travails are reasonably well-executed. As they fumble charmingly through their messy love lives – Bill pining for Erica, Sam refusing to be tied down by love until she meets the sweet, determined Lou (Logan Lerman), Rusty falling for messed-up Kate (Liana Liberato) – the film runs the gamut from romantic to tragic, sad to sweet.

Boone’s roster of quirky characters is very well-cast (and we don’t just mean the matching eyebrows sported by Connelly and Collins, although that is a stroke of casting genius). Kinnear miraculously manages to keep Bill sympathetic rather than creepy, and Connelly just about succeeds in adding some pathos to her poorly-written part. Collins actually manages to get to the heart of her character, for once, while Wolff works some quiet wonders with the best-written role of a boy stumbling painfully into love and adulthood.

Anyone looking to be completely captivated or unsettled by a film should probably look elsewhere. Stuck In Love doesn’t have anything new to offer its viewers, and there’s definitely a grimmer version of this film that could have been made that might have been more psychologically interesting and realistic. For what it chooses to be, however, Boone’s film gets by with just enough romance and humour, delivered by a cast that makes it work better than it should.

Basically: Stuck in slightly shallow, almost wilfully happy mode, but it’s sweet and entertaining enough.

Admission (2013)

What do you do if a movie doesn’t fall easily into any of the standard categories, instead flitting from the realm of comedy to drama and back again, with a side helping of romance to boot? If you’re a studio executive, the answer is to take the easiest way out: prey on the die-hard romantic in every female by marketing the film as a fun, fluffy romantic comedy of little dramatic or intellectual consequence. In reality, that would be doing movies like Admission a disservice. While Paul Weitz’s film isn’t quite as polished or quietly perfect as his earlier efforts like About A Boy, there’s more to enjoy here beyond the wacky laughs promised in the trailer.

Tina Fey (of television’s 30 Rock fame) plays Portia Nathan, a diligent, by-the-book Princeton University admissions officer who has spent her entire working life maintaining a professional distance from the students whose case files wind up on her desk. But her life is turned upside down when she receives a call from offbeat teacher John Pressman (Paul Rudd), who introduces her to the quirky, brilliant Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) – a kid who might well be the infant son Portia gave up for adoption when she was still in college.

Anyone expecting a raucous, knockabout comedy would be sorely disappointed by Admission – mainly because there really isn’t all that much to laugh about in the film. Apart from the sillier moments already showcased in the trailer, Admission‘s humour is quieter and more subtle. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that the film stumbles more when it’s trying to go for the funny bone than when it makes a play for the heart (and brain).

On the dramatic front, however, Admission is a surprising delight. Portia’s deepening relationships with John, Jeremiah and her resolutely feminist mother Susannah (Lily Tomlin) are very nicely developed, resulting in a character study that’s a great deal more insightful and affecting than the average rom-com. Fey proves that she can hit dramatic notes as well as she can deliver comedic gold, bringing unexpected (but very welcome) weight and depth to the rapidly unravelling Portia. She’s ably matched by Rudd, who manages to keep free-spirited single dad John charming and sweet rather than annoying and flippant.

If Admission falls somewhat short in the final analysis, that would be due primarily to its rickety plot. The mechanics of the story feel a bit forced, as if Portia is being shoved into a standard sitcom box in which she doesn’t really belong. Tough those moments out, however – because, if you dig a little beneath the glossy surface of this comic drama, you’ll find a character study well worth the price of admission.

Basically: Deeper and richer than a typical rom-com (which this is very much not), though it’s not quite as good as Fey and Rudd deserve.

Written for F*** Magazine