The Edge of Seventeen

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.

I can't say that I expected to see this movie opening weekend, or at all for that matter. But I'm glad I did. The Edge of Seventeen is an awkwardly charming coming of age tale that flirts in the same vein as some classic John Hughes 80's flicks.

I think all of us have been keeping an eye on Hailee Steinfeld since True Grit in 2010. When you can steal scenery from the likes of Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin, you know you have someone special. The Edge of Seventeen is an entirely different genre and obstacle for Steinfeld, however. I almost think that the coming-of- age-teenage-angst-comedy-drama's are the most difficult films to reach a broad audience, perhaps even more so than westerns. I usually need something to hook me before I spend money on one of these, and that came by way of Woody Harrelson.

Harrelson play's Steinfeld's teacher and common companion at lunch when there's no one else to sit with. The brilliant thing about this relationship is that its neither too dramatic nor too goofy, the writers find a nice balance between gut busting laughs on Harrelson's end to a nice dramatic payoff in the latter half. For all the clichés that this film inevitably has, this relationship was something very refreshing and served as the highlights for most of the film.

Nadine (Steinfeld) has several issues with her mother, brother, and best friend to figure out throughout the course of the film. But it was pleasing to see that the writers didn't choose to make any one character in the right or wrong. I constantly felt like I was playing out both sides in my head as to who I believe had the right to be mad at the other or vice versa. Being in a family of 7, I can definitely relate to some of the family obstacles Nadine goes through, and it wasn't Hollywoodized just for the sake of pushing the plot forward. There's unfortunately quite a few clichéd tropes that this film ends up taking you toward, but it felt more natural than most of these types of films. This could be attributed to the welcomed R rating the film received.

It isn't for everyone, and I wouldn't even consider myself the target audience. But it speaks to larger personal and family issues than the trailer sets up. It's also one of the best Woody Harrelson performances I've seen recently, even if he is probably as reserved as he's ever been.

+Steinfeld carries this film

+With the help of the hilarious Harrelson

+Writing

-Inevitably some clichés and predictable plot points

8.0/10

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.

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.

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.