criterionforum.org

Red Band trailer for James L Brooks-produced the Edge of Seventeen-- another year, another hilarious Hailee Steinfeld teen comedy?

The Edge of Seventeen
An impressive addition to the James L. Brooks family of well-observed, nuanced takes on conventional narratives. Kelly Fremon Craig is a worthy successor to Brooks in her compassion for the film's characters and her resistance to simplifying their relationships, psychologies, or personalities. Accordingly, the cast is uniformly excellent, but Steinfeld's distinct and passionate performance is truly great, realizing her character with an extensive vocabulary of unexpected facial expressions and fiery, dexterous line deliveries. The understated happy ending, as it is, moved me deeply. Nadine's conflicts, internal and external, aren't resolved, but she found the strength to engage with others a little more and, for now, that's enough. Emotionally and representationally truthful in a way that movies about teenagers have rarely ever been.

Superswede11 wrote:The Edge of Seventeen
An impressive addition to the James L. Brooks family of well-observed, nuanced takes on conventional narratives. Kelly Fremon Craig is a worthy successor to Brooks in her compassion for the film's characters and her resistance to simplifying their relationships, psychologies, or personalities. Accordingly, the cast is uniformly excellent, but Steinfeld's distinct and passionate performance is truly great, realizing her character with an extensive vocabulary of unexpected facial expressions and fiery, dexterous line deliveries. The understated happy ending, as it is, moved me deeply. Nadine's conflicts, internal and external, aren't resolved, but she found the strength to engage with others a little more and, for now, that's enough. Emotionally and representationally truthful in a way that movies about teenagers have rarely ever been.

(apparently) Malick-approved

This was okay. I've literally liked Steinfeld in everything I've seen her in and this is no different. The concept here is sound: depict a teenager with all the flighty, selfish, misguided, and emotive stuff not glossed over while still making them relateable/likable. And it works by those metrics. But it doesn't feel fresh, and the insights are too familiar, the resolutions (apologies to the above defense) too pat, the film somehow never as funny as it should be. I just kept coming back to Steinfeld's previous teen comedy Barely Lethal, which repurposed a familiar template into a film about how the external influences of teen comedies (and film at-large) are digested and themselves repurposed by audiences while still being a successful teen comedy. I can't imagine I'd ever watch this again when I could just watch that instead, especially when the best aspect here is present there without Steinfeld being the only draw.

Finally got around to seeing this. A Malick and Brooks endorsement is usually enough for me, plus domino is right that Barely Lethal was quite fun. This was different enough from that film for me--my reaction is much closer to superswede. Steinfeld's dynamic with her animation friend was really fun, both of them portraying the right tone of awkwardness through a mix of stammering and facial expression. I also really liked her dynamic with Harrelson. His character is the one I figured would be the most cliche, instead he ends up with some of the funniest lines. Two scenes in particular had me laughing about as hard as I laughed for any 2016 film, Masterminds aside.

I think superswede is right that this is "representationally" true in that it shows the hyper ideals and contradictory emotions that go along with these years. They're also a little more socially awkward due to their screen obsession. This was really amusingly shown in the fish tank scene with Steinfeld and the cool guy; but later it's kind of terrifying and pathetic. The conflict of social media and even more overly-sex obsessed as this age group tends to be is fully shown, along with the real consequences to it, disturbing as they can be, w/o glossing it over. Great performances all around, especially Steinfeld, and in some ways an understated movie. Sure it has the typical teenage film emotional scenes, but none of it seemed too cheap or overdone to me which made the ending even better.