That Awkward Moment

Romantic comedies have had something of a facelift of recent years, with studios feeling the pressure to appeal to both male and female comedies (becuase girls are only interested in rom-coms about shoes and getting married obviously-but thats another post).  So with that in mind That Awkward Moment aims to appeal to both sexes, with a look at bromances and plenty of nudity and sex alongside the romance. But will this tactic work, and more importantly be funny? 

When their friend Mikey (Michael B. Jordan) find outs his wife wants  a divorce, his best pals Jason (Zac Efron) and Daniel (Miles Teller) make a pact to stay single with him. However soon all three are left in complicated romantic entaglements that threaten their quest for singlehood.

You can probably tell from the synopisis whether or not this will be your type of film. On the positive side, the bromance between the three guys works, which is good as a lot of time is spent in their company, and the three leads make a believeable group of friends. Their respective romances meanwhile has mixed results.

Although there were some chemsitry between Jason (Efron) and Ellie (Imogine Potts) and their romance had some sweet and funny moments, the main problem is that Jason is a major douche. I just didn’t think Ellie should accept Jason back after he blows her off when she really needs him. It was bad enough he mistook her for a prostitute (in one of the many moments that don’t come across as believeable) after they first slept together, are we really meant to believe she would then take him back for something even more unforgiveable later? He would have to work a lot harder than that.

Luckily the other two guys were more likebale with Mikey being the most sympathetic of the three and Daniel being probably the funniest. In fact I was more invested with Daniel’s relationship with gal pal Chelsea (Mckensie Davis) than with Jason and Ellie. While you really feel for Mikey as he gets messed around by his ex wife and struggles to get bakc into the dating world, his situation with his wife is a bit predictable and doesn’t really go anywhere that interesting.

Sometimes the script has a tendancy to replace comedy and character development with crude jokes about sex and hopes that no one will notice. It’s this overeliance which may alienate some viewers. It feels at times that the filmakers were not confident enough with its talented cast and kept putting in the dick jokes just in case.

I expect my opinion will be in the minority as I’ve seen this film get a lot of hate since it’s been released, and yes it’s not particularly original or mind-blowingly hilarious. However for me, That Awkward Moments does have enough funny set peieces and one liners to stop it slipping into just another crude, witless comedy.

Rating 3/5-a fun if not hugely original or realistic take on modern relationships