Three best friends find themselves where we've all been - at that confusing moment in every dating relationship when you have to decide "So...where is this going?"
Coupled with the odd successful sight gag - such as Efron turning up at a party inappropriately dressed - That Awkward Moment is watchably bad rather than just plain awful.
With two stars in the ascendant in Jordan and Teller and another, Efron, already commanding an army's worth of adulation, this a cast that should prove catnip for its target demographic. The film itself offers cheery, lightweight fun without taking itself too seriously.
It should be charmless but the cast sparkle and help writer-director Tom Gormican refresh – if not freshen up – the romantic comedy.
This awkward moment lasts for the best part of 94 minutes.
A box-fresh comedy both real and romantic, That Awkward Moment rarely has any of its own. Date night sorted, then...
This sporadically successful movie proves that a relationship comedy from the male viewpoint isn't easy. The film only really relaxes in the outtake bloopers over the closing credits – bloopers that disclose how carefully controlled and policed everything in the preceding drama has been.
Much of the humour is surprisingly crude and reminiscent of lowbrow frat movies. Jokes about condoms, Viagra and dildos and references to The Story Of O sit strangely alongside sweet-natured scenes of characters courting.
Incredibly, beautiful young women seem to find this behaviour so delightful that these largely hateful characters are not only able to keep a roster of girls in constant rotation, they can even score dates with women after mistaking them for hookers. Even worse, by allowing the guys off the hook so quickly at the end, the women in the film can’t help but seem like submissive dolts.
Astonishingly, Tom Gormican's screenplay once appeared on the respected "black list" of hot unproduced scripts, proving once and for all that (to quote William Goldman) in Hollywood, nobody knows anything.
It’s so gruesomely laughless that even Adam Sandler could have been persuaded to turn this one down.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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