Director: Tom Gormican
Starring: Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Imogen Poots, Mackenzie Davis
Running Time: 94 Minutes
Certificate: 15
THAT AWKWARD MOMENT starts off well, with three different male friends all thrown together when one discovers that his wife is leaving him for another man. Mikey (Michael B. Jordan) is distraught and, having married young, doesn’t really know what to do with himself. As a result, his best friends Jason (Zac Efron) and Daniel (Miles Teller) decide to stay single with him so that they can all just go out together and hook up with women. They will be each other’s wingmen and have plenty of fun in the process – or at least that’s the plan.
Jason is introduced as the ladies man early on, jumping from woman to woman and throwing them out before they can ask – in stereotypical female fashion – where the relationship is going. When he gets together with Ellie (Imogen Poots), however, all bets are off and he realises he might be getting more involved than he’s comfortable with. And it isn’t just Jason keeping things to himself. Not much time passes before they each find themselves hiding a relationship so as to keep the others oblivious – largely because they don’t want the fun to end.
That ‘moment’ quickly moves from awkward to just plain awful as Jason does some atrocious things to prove that he is, in fact, NOT in a relationship – the lengths of which are baffling. From that point on, the slight ways the film had – up until this point – demonstrated all that is wrong with both men and women suddenly become amplified. Men are all idiots who run from commitment and can’t see past their crotch; women are either cheaters or needy, clingy, annoying things that don’t go away and just keep badgering men until they finally ‘give in’ and join the relationship.
THAT AWKWARD MOMENT had the potential to be a really clever, witty, honest look at modern dating and relationships but sadly not even Poots can stop it being a mess of terrible stereotypes and bad people with few qualities to ultimately redeem them.
[usr=2] THAT AWKWARD MOMENT is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 2nd June.
