The Spectacular Now

Directed by James Ponsoldt

(R)

****

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“It’s rare for a film about teenagers to feel this mature,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. A charismatic Miles Teller stars opposite Shailene Woodley as Sutter, a high school senior whose easygoing charm hides a growing drinking problem. When he wakes up on a lawn looking up at Aimee, a shy classmate he barely knows, a romance may seem inevitable. Yet nothing about that relationship’s uncertain path feels less than authentic. Woodley, who made her feature debut opposite George Clooney in The Descendants, “radiates a gentle warmth that is simply magnetic on-screen,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. “But this is Teller’s film,” and the baby-faced 26-year-old actor “infuses Sutter with such charisma that it’s difficult not to forgive his many stumbles.” Given the story’s dark turn at about its midpoint, the ending can seem “a bit of a rose-colored cop-out,” said Dana Stevens in Slate.com. “But on the way to that arguably disappointing ending, The Spectacular Now captures the beauty and scariness and lacerating intensity of first love, and for that, you forgive it everything.”