The idea of a ‘chick flick’ for guys is certainly nothing new, but it doesn’t always work. Fortunately, That Awkward Moment manages to bring just enough new to the table to make this an entertaining film.
The romantic comedy stars former teen heartthrob and current discount Ryan Reynolds, Zac Efron along with the highly underrated Michael B. Jordan; and Miles Teller, that one guy that you’re pretty sure was in that one movie once, but you don’t remember what it was.
This film is at its core a romantic comedy disguising itself as a raunchy teen comedy. It ends up with a foot in both worlds, not truly awful at either, but also not really great.
The main actors do have decent chemistry as Zac Efron pulls off the same charisma that landed him his status as teen heartthrob, Michael B. Jordan delivers a great performance and Miles Teller…. is pretty funny I guess.
The one area where this movie does fall short is the romance department. As I said the main actors have pretty good chemistry…. with each other. That’s not to say that the love interests in this movie don’t give good performances, they just aren’t given much to do. All of the guys have story arc and character development whereas all the females in this movie exist solely to move the plot along.
Whether or not you will enjoy this movie depends entirely on your reaction to the trailer. If you see the trailer and cringe inside because you already know the entire plot of the movie and none of the jokes seem funny to you, you might not like this movie. However, if you watch the trailer and instantly have an desire to go see the movie because of how funny it was, you will probably enjoy this movie.
By the way, if you do use the trailer to judge this movie I would recommend the red band trailer, as it allows some of the funnier jokes to be in the trailer. If you are as immature as I am, you’ll probably find it just as funny as I did.
That Awkward Moment hasn’t done well amongst critics, as I think some of them took the marketing campaign of this movie a little too seriously and thought it was trying to be an overly clever subversion of the romantic comedy genre. This movie clearly has no such lofty goals, but it tries to pretend it does to hide a formulaic, American Pie teen comedy style (even though these people are in their 30’s).  Romantic comedies in general usually aren’t masterpieces, so to expect anything more out of a film like this is somewhat unfair. Judging it purely by other movies in its genre, it doesn’t stand out as a classic that will be remembered, but it is a better movie than many critics are giving it credit for.
That Awkward Moment might not the best Valentine’s Day movie, but if you are looking for a few cheap immature laughs, it should tide you over until the next Seth Rogen movie.