It’s easy to look at That Awkward Moment and decide that’s awk-ful movie. (Sorry.) Writer/director Tim Gormican seems to have fished his screenplay out of a bin marked “1997,” when tremendously artificial sitcom set-ups and post-Swingers macho philosophizing were celebrated, along with the immature and often disgusting behavior of these types of lothario protagonists. That Awkward Moment plays like a relic with ad-libbed dick jokes thrown in, as some sad attempt at “relevancy.”
But that’s not the movie I saw. Or rather, it is exactly the movie I saw, but only while I was watching a more interesting experiment play out underneath it.
That Awkward Moment is about three 20-something friends trying not to find love in New York City, which – if the movies have taught is anything – is a statistical improbability. Two of them design book covers and live in lush apartments. The other is a doctor who lives in a crappy one. When the doctor finds out his wife has been cheating on him, they all vow to stay single as long as possible to play the field, and just generally use any woman who happens to be standing next to them or currently accepting their thrusts. No sooner do they make that vow – frequently referred to as a “bet” even though they set no stakes whatsoever – do they begin to meet their respective soul mates.
There’s a heightened lameness to this set-up that a part of me refuses to believe is unintentional. Surely Gormican knows that accidentally mistaking your date for a hooker and confusing a “dress up” party for a costume party aren’t enough to hold an entire movie together. Let’s give the guy a little credit: after all, he was smart enough to cast Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller as his leads.
The charismatic Efron, the honest Jordan, and the charismatic and honest Teller have clearly volunteered to be tested by That Awkward Moment. You can see it in their eyes while they desperately try to bring to life mannered, staccato dialogue and barely-there punchlines. They have, at turns, been asked to play idiots, monsters and stereotypes, or idiot monster stereotypes, and yet they’re so damned talented that they almost get away with it.
Watching Teller lie to his girlfriend about whether he’s told his guy friends that they’re getting serious brings back memories of watching Peter O’Toole explaining what the “Omegahedron” is in Supergirl. Watching Michael B. Jordan escape the “I have an orange penis” scene with his dignity intact is not entirely unlike watching John Gielgud walk into, and then mercifully out of, Arthur 2: On the Rocks. Indeed, put the two together, and That Awkward Moment almost plays like a post-modern romantic comedy Caligula: a celebration of unforgivable behavior with a cast that surely, SURELY must have had something better to do.
That Awkward Moment takes place in the fall and winter of New York City but it’s the movie itself that’s visibly overcast: everyone, from the poorly written male leads to the merely underwritten Imogen Poots, Mackenzie Davis and Addison Timlin, is too good for this, but they’re also too good to just phone it in. These actors are impossible to hate, even when they’re harshly judging a philandering wife for the exact same behavior they celebrate in themselves. They are angels playing at demons, and no amount of sin can hide their halos. I have to think, as I watch this dreck, that this was Tim Gormican’s secret point all along: that he could commit any cinematic crime imaginable and audiences would still watch in rapt suspense just to see if this cast can really save every, single, awkward moment.
That Awkward Moment is a terrible movie, but it’s a master class in how to cover your ass.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
