31st Jan2014

That Awkward Moment – Film

by timbaros
images-89Zac Effron is back to making the kind of movies he is well-known for – not very good ones. Such is the film That Awkward Moment.
After trying to up his cred with his last two film performances – 2012’s Paperboy (where his character falls in long with Nicole Kidman’s character) and last years’ Parkland (playing – not very well – the doctor on duty when JFK was shot), Effron is back to rom-com territory. But That Awkward Moment is excrutiantingly awful.
Jason (Zac Zeffron) and his friends Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan) have known each other for a long time. Mikey, who is a doctor, is breaking up with his wife, who happens to be sleeping around on him. So distraught is Mikey that him and his friends all make a pact to stay single, brothers in arms, side by side, and simply not all at costs to get into a relationship. Of course, this is not what happens.
Daniel, firstly, happens to casually fall in love with one of their friends, Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis), who was the woman they used to wrangle other women for them. Jason has no problem at all attracting women. He is very goodlooking with a hot body (Effon’s is shirtless in many scenes, and there is a funny bit where he is lying face down a toilet, totally naked) Also, Jason is happy in a purely sexual relationship he has with another woman, so of course he doesn’t need a woman in his life. As mentioned, this is not what happens as the plot is very predictable.
Daniel and Jason happen to work at the same company, a book publishing company. Their job is to illustrate the front covers of soon-to-be published books. Well, one night they meet Ellie (Imogen Poots) at a bar, and before you can say this movie is stupid, Jason and Ellie wind up in the sack together. After the act, Jason notices that in her bedroom she’s got a wad of cash on her bedside, a racy book called “The Story of O”, and a few boxes of condoms. So he automatically thinks that she is a prostitute. He calls Mikey who tells him to get out of there, so he does. Well the next day at work he and Jason are meeting the author of a new book whose cover they are to illustrate, and guess who is the book’s author? Ellie. At this point we know where the story is going…and as Jason and Ellie start seeing each other (purely just for sex of course), her father passes away and there are long scenes with Jason contemplating if he should go to the funeral, for if he does it would appear that him and Ellie were actually dating. And he doesn’t want to break the pact he made with his friends.
The story gets very predictable after this. Daniel falls in love with Chelsea, and you can see it from a mile away that Jason starts to fall for Ellie. That Awkward Moment is the typical rom com Effron film. And of course the ending is as predictable as the same look on Effron’s face he has throughout most of the film. Effron should stick to making musicals for the teenyboppers.