That Awkward Moment, the latest bro-tastic laffer which attempts to thread the needle between twentysomething sexual exploration and acting out and relationship comedy (read: accepted “male” and “female” genres) is an awkward mash-up, but in the end will represent nothing more than a momentary, wholly understandable blip on the respective filmographies of its talented young cast. A stab at blended American Pie and Swingers-type antics, writer-director Tom Gormican’s film banks heavily on the ample chemistry of its players, to intermittent but largely unmemorable effect.
The movie unfolds in New York City, and centers around a trio of guys who are best friends. Jason (Zac Efron) and Daniel (Miles Teller), who work together at a publishing house designing book covers, are your classic player-types, who enjoy the bar scene and take extraordinary measures to develop a rotation of girls and avoid being pinned down in a relationship. When their doctor pal Mikey (Michael B. Jordan) discovers his wife Vera (Jessica Lucas) has been cheating on him and wants a divorce, Jason and Daniel vow to reintroduce him to single life, and enter into a pact to avoid getting into a relationship with any whiffs of exclusivity.
Things get complicated, however, when Daniel tumbles into the sack with his female wingman Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis), who’s apparently smitten by all his witty talk of receiving blowjobs from other girls. Jason, meanwhile, meets cute with Ellie (Imogen Poots) and, after their first night together ends in sex, transcends the awkwardness of mistakenly thinking she’s a prostitute. The more he gets to know her, the more Jason likes her. But when unexpected tragedy befalls Ellie, Jason blanches at comporting himself in the manner of a boyfriend, and jeopardizes a shot at maintaining a place in Ellie’s life. Can any of these guys grow up and find happiness in a monogamous relationship?
In his feature debut, Gormican basically serves jointly as ringmaster and a turbo-charged pace car, pushing his actors through rat-tat-tat dialogue, and hoping that the movie’s high-volume joke quotient wins over viewers. In a game cast — especially the talented Teller, who wins the day — the director has a lot going for him, but Gormican’s script, which was spotlighted as one of the top unproduced comedy screenplays in the 2010 Hollywood Black List, is a vessel of breezy banter, confidence and energy more than a cogent, well-rooted narrative.
Daniel and Chelsea’s burgeoning relationship doesn’t really pass the smell test, and Mikey seems most defined by shaking his head at Daniel and Jason and telling them that they’re idiots, which he does at least a half dozen times. Overall, the film seems inordinately preoccupied with proving its bawdy bona fides, by way of a good bit of cock-centric humor. Some of this works (Jason showing up at what he thinks is a costume party in a compromising guise, only to discover it’s a tony affair), but many other bits (I’m looking in your direction, confusion of self-tanner with hand lotion) feel like hijackers of tone, robbing the movie of any honest momentum or flow.
Certain sequences work quite nicely, and exhibit a keen observational touch; Jason and Ellie’s first date proper is a scene which nails the pushback and gentle mocking buried in as-yet-consummated flirtation. But Gormican seems afraid or unable to focus on honest emotion for too long, and when he contrives to deposit four of his characters in a bathroom at a Thanksgiving party — the scene most emblematic of That Awkward Moment‘s unfortunate unraveling — it becomes robustly apparent that his film is yet another example of a modestly smart movie felled by adherence to formula and dictums that don’t align with its raison d’être. (Focus, R, 94 minutes)