The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
Two high school girls are best friends until one dates the other's older brother, who is totally his sister's nemesis.
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Given that the genre has a pretty good record overall (Sixteen Candles, Clueless, Freaky Friday, Mean Girls), this wouldn't be too shabby.
From what I’ve been told, films like Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles were great representations of the high school experience of that decade.
When Nadine accidentally-on-purpose runs into her crush, Nick, in the tropical fish aisle, the glow is Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and the soundtrack is Spandau Ballet’s “True,” made famous at the school dance in Sixteen Candles.
A terrific teen comedy with the traditional feel of John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink, The Edge of Seventeen stars Hailee Steinfeld as Nadine, a 17-year-old high-school misfit whose best and only friend starts to date her smug, perfect older brother.
It’s an easy comparison, as “The Edge of Seventeen” was plainly inspired by the iconic ’80s teen comedy “Sixteen Candles.”
For instance, her love interest is her dorky Asian best friend, a role traditionally relegated to the wacky sidekick, like Long Duk Dong in “Sixteen Candles.”
She sent it off to iconic producer James L. Brooks ( Terms of Endearment , Broadcast News , Jerry Maguire ) and hoped it get really, really lucky.
Craig working alongside producer James L. Brooks feels like a marvel: the man responsible for Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News brings a gravitas often lacking from teen fare (at least, lacking since the days of John Hughes), and Craig brings a fresh and singular perspective.
The Edge of Seventeen contains some frustrating elements, like its nondescript visual aesthetic (excluding Carla Hetland’s costume design and William Arnold’s production design, both of which are superb) and an overly sentimental prologue that recalls a similarly unnecessary one in Broadcast News, directed by The Edge of Seventeen producer James L. Brooks.
This is the man who directed such films as Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets, produced Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything and Jerry McGuire and created or produced TV classics including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi and The Simpsons .
As a filmmaker himself, Brooks has made movies like “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment” that perfectly balance comedy and drama, big laughs and emotional honesty.
It’s reminiscent of James L. Brooks, the man behind “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment,” who writes flawed characters with love and understanding.
Having been produced by filmmaker, James L. Brooks ( Terms Of Endearment , As Good as It Gets ), it’s no surprise that The Edge Of Seventeen has that classic clutch movie quality.
She sent it off to iconic producer James L. Brooks ( Terms of Endearment , Broadcast News , Jerry Maguire ) and hoped it get really, really lucky.
Craig working alongside producer James L. Brooks feels like a marvel: the man responsible for Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News brings a gravitas often lacking from teen fare (at least, lacking since the days of John Hughes), and Craig brings a fresh and singular perspective.
This is the man who directed such films as Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets, produced Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything and Jerry McGuire and created or produced TV classics including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi and The Simpsons .
As a filmmaker himself, Brooks has made movies like “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment” that perfectly balance comedy and drama, big laughs and emotional honesty.
It’s reminiscent of James L. Brooks, the man behind “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment,” who writes flawed characters with love and understanding.
The structure gets wonky when she runs out of ideas, even sending Nadine to the playground and then to the yogurt shop for many minutes to have a kind of epiphany, à la Cher’s moment in Clueless — Amy Heckerling has her heroine strolling by well-timed fountains and getting distracted by designer sales (her passion) as she comes to realize she’s in love with her ex-stepbrother.
“The Edge of Seventeen” will most likely become the equivalent high school cult-classic for girls (in addition to “Clueless”) that “Dazed & Confused” is for boys.
If you’re a filmmaker trying to make a movie about teen girl angst, you better damn well have something new or original to say, because you’ll always be competing with classics like Mean Girls , Clueless , and even Fast Times at Ridgemont High .
Pitched somewhere between the double-edged wit of Clueless and the rawness of Confessions of a Teenage Girl , The Edge of Seventeen ’s whip-smart script is simultaneously uproariously funny, heart-breaking, and keenly observed.
Steinfeld is stunning as the lead in a role that’s alternately heartfelt and hilarious; she’s the center of the film and the movie is unthinkable without her, the same way Alicia Silverstone was essential to “Clueless.”
In the best teen films, from “Sixteen Candles” to “Clueless” to “Superbad” to the greatest high school movie of the last ten years, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” the main characters have a way of occupying the moral high ground.
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Like with Juno and The Breakfast Club, this is a film that will leave you laughing and crying thanks to its genuine sense of heart, humour, wit and pathos.
It’s visible in every detail from the damp autumnal setting to the way Nadine’s style veers between Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club and a grungier Cher from Clueless.
What’s so refreshing about “The Edge of Seventeen” is how expertly it upends all the tired tropes of teen comedies, ranging from “Love Finds Andy Hardy” to “The Breakfast Club.”
And the Lord did then give us Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, and lo, it was good.
The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are tinged with magical realism, seen through the eyes of the teen who's got the grown-ups' number; Heathers (1988) is a very dark comedy with the trappings of a revenge thriller, and the adults are basically nowhere to be seen.
With this follow-up to a first feature-length script (the lackluster “Post Grad”) Craig has armed herself with one of the best films of 2016, and one of the best coming-of-age stories in the past 20 years.
This is the directing debut for Kelly Fremon Craig, who previously wrote the entirely forgettable 2009 comedy Post Grad .
The Edge of Seventeen is a delightful and honest teen comedy with a mature soul, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig (who also wrote the Alexis Bledel coming-of-age comedy Post Grad ).
Fremon Craig (whose main credit prior to this was as writer of the poorly received Post Grad ) doesn't try anything big or bold visually, and that's fine; she knows how to keep things moving.
Kelly Fremon Craig, surprisingly, the writer of the awful, plastic-fake Post Grad (2009), makes her directorial debut here with a great deal of understanding and love.
Director and screenwriter Kelly Fremon Craig — who wrote 2009’s Post Grad , which was an object lesson in how not to tell stories about young women in the same way that Edge is a master class in getting it right — smartly tweaks the limitations of a low budget into that timeless vibe.
Given that the genre has a pretty good record overall (Sixteen Candles, Clueless, Freaky Friday, Mean Girls), this wouldn't be too shabby.
Nor does it much resemble some of the more high school-centric teen comedies of the last several years, such as “Mean Girls” and “Easy A,” in part because Nadine so deliberately limits her interactions to those within a very small circle.
And while its tone is closer to the earnestness of John Hughes’ 1980s films than the bawdy zingers and pratfalls of Mean Girls or The To Do List , The Edge of Seventeen finds humour in a specifically feminine flavour of rage, yearning and humiliation.
Fifteen years later, a few bright spots ( Mean Girls , Juno , The Spectacular Now ) haven’t quite dispelled the sense that the Venn diagram between angsty white teenagers and meaningful art has drifted into two non-overlapping circles.
If this was Mean Girls , she'd be both Lindsay Lohan's Cady Heron and Rachel McAdams' Regina George.
Like “Ghost World” and “Heathers,” other movies aimed at smart girls and their older sisters, Craig’s film will find its cult following as its audience catches up with it.
The Edge of Seventeen may not be embraced by John Hughes nostalgists, but Steinfeld's Nadine is a direct descendant of Molly Ringwald's Samantha in Sixteen Candles — as well as of the marginalized heroines played by Winona Ryder in Heathers , Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You , Thora Birch in Ghost World and many others.
Craig owes a lot to the works of John Hughes and movies like Ghost World and Mean Girls , but she still puts a very personal spin on the genre, and Steinfeld gives a fantastic performance that matches up to her breakout turn in True Grit .
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With the best of intentions but few regrets, Nadine would probably devour a definitive teen icon such as Molly Ringwald's Andie Walsh from Pretty in Pink , John Hughes' 1986 masterpiece.
A terrific teen comedy with the traditional feel of John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink, The Edge of Seventeen stars Hailee Steinfeld as Nadine, a 17-year-old high-school misfit whose best and only friend starts to date her smug, perfect older brother.
And the Lord did then give us Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, and lo, it was good.
That was the heyday of John Hughes: Molly Ringwald was Pretty in Pink and Matthew Broderick would soon take the day off as Ferris Bueller.
As Mr. Brumer, the school’s long defeated English teacher, Harrelson ranks up there with such unlikely and welcome teen movie supporting players as Harry Dean Stanton in “Pretty in Pink” and the tag team of Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci in “Easy A.” Mr. Brumer is Nadine’s barely-there rock — the fellow sadsack who will sit there and silently sit through her epic complaint jags, piping up only to offer deflating non-advice or a withering quip.
Like “Pretty in Pink,” Craig’s obvious inspiration, Nadine is presently presented with a love-struck, tongue-tied nerd she refuses to give the time of day.
Those that do stand out — Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything…, the films of John Hughes — often become generational classics.
More directly, thank Kelly Fremon Craig, whose directorial debut confronts millennial teens with the same authenticity and verve that helped “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” jumpstart a revolution when it crash-landed into the ’80s.
There is a short list of high school films that can grasp and accurately depict the pain, anguish and heartache of the teenage experience: “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” the works of John Hughes, “Mean Girls,” “Easy A.”
She’s not like Jennifer Jason Leigh’s naive Gen X’er Stacy in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
If you’re a filmmaker trying to make a movie about teen girl angst, you better damn well have something new or original to say, because you’ll always be competing with classics like Mean Girls , Clueless , and even Fast Times at Ridgemont High .
Over the past 40 years, Fast Times at Ridgemont High , Dazed and Confused , Can’t Hardly Wait , American Pie , and Superbad have had huge impacts on the moviegoers growing up with them.