The Spectacular Now trailer: Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller

Remember that magic moment in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything, when John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler stands on his love's lawn, Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes blaring from the boombox? James Ponsoldt, director of The Spectacular Now definitely does. Ponsoldt told the L.A. Times: 

"It changed my life when I saw it, it genuinely did," Ponsoldt said of the 1989 cult favorite. "I totally fell in love with Diane Court [Ione Skye]. I had the poster on my wall. I was hooked."

Ponsoldt is hoping he can impact today's teens in a similar way, hoping that today's ya audiences will be hooked on his screen adaptation of Tim Tharp's The Spectacular Now, the ya novel about a hard partying guy who falls for a nice girl. 

Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller

That nice girl is played by Shailene Woodley who I first saw in - and thought she was spectacular in - The Descendants as George Clooney's daughter, but America's teenagers know her from the television show The Secret Life of the American Teenager. 

Woodley has a trio of films coming out in the next several months so chances are we'll all get to know her a bit better; a year or so younger than Jennifer Lawrence, she may give The Hunger Games star a run for her money with the release of Divergent, based on the popular Veronica Roth novel, next March. Her leading man in The Spectacular Now, Miles Teller, is Peter in Divergent. And Ansel Elgort, who plays Woodley's brother in Divergent is Gus to Woodley's Hazel in The Fault in Our Stars, currently shooting. It's a small small world. 

The Spectacular Now Trailer #1   2:00 minutes

The movie opens August 2, ten days from now, time to read the book first if you haven't already. I haven't already. The character Woodley plays, Aimee, seems like the kind of girl I'd want my own son to bring home; smart, funny, NOT trashy.  Miles Teller - memorable as the young driver in The Rabbit Hole - is Sutter Keely, hugely popular, all hormones and bravado, sees Aimee as a 'social disaster' and decides to make her over. Well, we've seen the makeover theme many times in movies and that usually comes back to bite someone in the bum. The 1980's romcom Can't Buy Me Love with Patrick Dempsey as the loser turned big man on campus comes to mind; what's the best make-over movie you've ever seen?