The Edge of Seventeen: Das Jahr der Entscheidung

Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) loved her father and battled with her mother (Kyra Sedgwick). At 13, she lost her father. Her life is one of miserable sarcasm except for her best friend since second grade, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson). She hates her perfect brother Darian (Blake Jenner). Dorky Erwin Kim has a crush on her but she's in lust with delinquent Nick Mossman. To her horrors, Krista starts dating Darian. The only person she could turn to is equally sarcastic teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson).

It's funny. It's touching. It's poignant. There are no superficial characters in the main group. The jokes are great. Everybody's great. Woody is a real standout. The only drawback I can remotely dig up is that Hailee Steinfeld is too pretty. She follows a long line of Hollywood beauties who dress down to do 'She's All That'. The Pedro joke is hilarious which helps a lot. However, she's never going to be Danny DeVito level. The reason it works so well is a terrific performance from Hailee. She really sells this self-obsessed bitter teen while maintaining a great likability. One roots for her and sees the world from her eyes even as everyone knows that she's wrong. Hailee shows some terrific acting talents once again.

John Hughes is an unmistakable touchstone of the coming of age 1980s high school dramedy. Films like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off chronicled the adolescent experience of growing up, dealing with teen angst and self-actualization while mixing in a dash of old fashioned screwball comedy which at once provides relatable laughter for the viewer while making the dramatic pills easier to swallow. All of those undeniably come to mind when watching the directorial debut of Post Grad screenwriter Kelly Fremon Craig, The Edge of Seventeen, a coming of age high school comedy about a socially awkward and unhappy teenage girl named Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld from True Grit) whose best friend enters a relationship with her hunky older brother (Blake Jenner from Everybody Wants Some). And yet it is Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High that The Edge of Seventeen finds its closest antecedent in, providing at once a funny and sympathetic rom com and a decidedly darker, more explicit look at budding female sexuality in a world adorned with dumb horny males who care nothing for the heroine's plight and emotional crossroads. At times its unbearable watching Nadine suffer while at the same time the film doesn't deny her own complicitness in the creation of her teenage misery. At first on the outset this looked like another Juno/Ghost World lovechild but as it progressed I was surprised how funny, charming, touching and well thought out this portrait of adolescent fear, anxiety and depression really was. Sure we've seen this movie done to death, but The Edge of Seventeen provided a fresh spin on the proceedings that kept it from blending together with what came before it.

"The Edge of Seventeen" (2016 release; 104 min.) brings the story of Nadine, a 17 yr. old junior at Lakewood HS. As the movie opens, Nadine is racing the school's hallways to meet with her favorite teacher and tell him "I'm going to kill myself!" The movie then goes back in time to see how we get to this point. After a short look at "Nadine, Age 7" and "Nadine, age 13", where we learn how socially awkward things are for Nadine, but for her strong friendship with her BFF Krista. That brings us to "Nadine, 17". At this point we're less than 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this movie is the directing debut for writer Kelly Fremon Craig (who wrote 2009's "Post Grad"). Here, Craig takes another shot at bringing the social awkwardness of being in high school and trying to survive all of the pressures that come with it. When was the last time that I've seen such an awkward teenager, who blurts out "I'm seeing myself and I can't stand it. I gotta spend the rest of my life with myself!". So nothing original here as such, except of course that Nadine is played by none other than Hailee Steinfeld, yes the little girl who was nominated of an Oscar in 2010 for "True Grit" is now grown up into a wonderful young lady which bunches of acting talent. Steinfeld basically carries the movie on her back, and is in virtually every single scene. There is some terrific support from Kyra Sedwick as Nadine's mom and Woody Harrelson as Nadine's teacher, but believe me when I say this is all about Hailee Steinfeld. Last but not least, the movie has a TON of great songs in it (check out the soundtrack).

"The Edge of Seventeen" opened nationally this past weekend. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended okay but not great (about 10 people in the entire theater). This movie has not gotten a big marketing push, and it remains to be seen whether it will benefit from strong word-of-mouth. I quite enjoyed it for what it was, a strong vehicle for leading actress Hailee Steinfeld, even if the territory she explores here has been done before and doesn't offer all that much new. If you get a chance to check it out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, I'd suggest you do and draw your own conclusion.

Remember all those teen movies about how much fun it is to be a teenager? Porky's, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, all those American Pie movies and movies that spend an inordinate amount of time at the beach, to name a few. These are typical teenage movies. The Edge of Seventeen is not a typical teenage movie, and that is what makes it so great. Oh, there have been other great non-typical teenage films of late, like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but somehow Seventeen stands alone.

Perhaps it is the intense and thoroughly committed performance of Hailee Steinfeld who started her film career under the tutelage of the Cohn Brothers in their remake of True Grit (oh yeah, and was nominated for an Oscar at the age of 14, although principle filming occurred while she was 13). Hailee so captures the angst of Nadine, whose name alone sets her apart, (Nadine was the most common name given to baby girls in 1958); that one cannot help but ache for her. Nadine carries the weight of the world on her shoulders and believes herself to be unlike any of the other kids who text each other about the tacos they're eating, and communicate in emojis.

She plays well alongside her favorite teacher, portrayed cheekily by Woody Harrelson who provides some of the best laughs in the film, as one might expect. Also of note, I think, is the quirky, lovable and downright cute performance of Hayden Szeto as Erwin. Erwin sits next to Nadine in class stumbling and bumbling his way through awkward repartee in the hopes of some sort of hook-up. But nothing is typical here, and the course that said repartee takes leads us into uncharted teen territory. It might also be interesting to note that the name Erwin was the most common baby name in 1918, which makes this Erwin an old soul, to be sure.

Kelly Fremon Craig has written a real gem here, and his first directing effort will earn him much critical acclaim, to be sure. The thing he does masterfully is take us inside the character of Nadine by giving us so many moments alone with her; moments when we experience in her stillness, in her eyes, and in her facial discipline as an actress the absolute bankruptcy of her isolation. None of us would want to be seventeen again, or ever; at least not her seventeen.

I am grateful to the studio, and to the Marcus Corporation for giving some of us movie lovers an opportunity to pre-screen this film that will be released on November 18th. I suppose they hope we will say good things about it and get others to go see the film. Well, go see the film. You will laugh, and you will need a few tissues, but you will not regret having spent a few hours walking in Nadine's shoes. Perhaps there is a little Nadine in all of us after all.

I know most people would have felt sympathy for Nadine. I personally wanted her to follow through with her suicide threats at times. I always struggle to connect with protagonists who hate themselves and actively try to make situations worse by saying the wrong thing. It comes from an attention seeking place and is inherently self absorbed. Hailee Steinfeld is fantastic playing her of course, I don't fault her performance for a second. She was just not much of a character to root for. From what we see Darrian really only insults her after she insults him first, and for the most part just wants to live his life, he isn't a complete alpha male asshole who thrives on power, just a kid who happened to be born good looking and thus got what most of us want, popularity.

The movie is good, but not great. It is not as powerful and memorable as recent teen dramas that came out in recent years. It also has clichéd silly music and sitcom moments where it really should have picked a tone and stuck with it. Also Krista's character is woefully underdeveloped. Would have been nice to see a few more scenes where they confide in each other about Nadine's behaviour. Woody Harrelson elevates this from a 6 to a 7 by just being Woody Harrelson. The man turns orange juice to whisky. This movie simply could have left more of an imprint than it does.