I saw Edge of Seventeen on November 18, 2016! I firmly believe this to be one of the best coming of age movies of all time. This is easily going in my Top 10 movies of 2016! It was a well acted and well written movie all around.
This was a movie that pulled me in right away. The characters are deep and there's a wide gamut of emotions. We feel the emotions with the character of Nadine and watch as she trudges through that phase of life known as adolescence. On some notion, we can identify with some of Nadine's problems. Adolescence is a hard time for everybody, even if some are just better at hiding it than others. This movie does an excellent job of approaching that through both teenagers and adults. In my honest opinion, Hailee Steinfeld's performance as Nadine is easily my favorite female performance of 2016! Steinfeld is such an excellent, young actress, and she's going to be an absolute force in Hollywood. She has been turning heads since she stole the show in True Grit as Mattie Ross in 2010. Nadine's dialogue draws some similarities to Ellen Page's Juno McGuff in some ways. Much like the role of Juno helped to get Ellen Page's name more known, Edge of Seventeen will do that for Steinfeld. She's one of the best actresses going today. For the record, Ellen Page is my favorite actreess, so it's natural that Steinfeld would be a favorite of mine. Steinfeld's performance is dark, sarcastic, hilarious, beautiful in many ways, and just outright mesmerizing. We follow her through a family tragedy, teachers (Woody Harrelson's Mr. Bruner is great and genuinely made me laugh at many times-he may tussle with Nadine from time to time, but ultimately you know he cares for her at several points of the movie & I love that he is the person that Nadine wants to share things with. Mr. Bruner is crucial to maintaining Nadine's sanity, which is great to see), family (Blake Jenner did a pretty good job as Darian-the brother trying to hold the family together even though he is popular, but he'll drop everything at a moment's notice to take care of Nadine or their mother-very good heroic character or a solid performance by Kyra Sedgwick who is still reeling from the tragedy and always spars with Nadine, but she is doing her part to try to maintain the family), and of course, boys (Hayden Szeto's role as Erwin Kim was hilarious, awkward, and creative which blended really well with Steinfeld's Nadine character-I really liked their chemistry together. It's one of those things where Erwin likes her, but she doesn't like him that way, however, we watch how that evolves. It's a fun, awkward story that's perfect for these two characters).
The dialogue is intelligent, the writing is fantastic, and there's many memorable scenes that I found myself immersed in. Nadine's mood swings are incredible to watch. She can go from ecstatic to enraged in 60 seconds as we all can, which is why I think many people, especially the teenagers of today can identify with. I think in the smart phone generation teenagers still need somebody to rely on. Nadine does have that with Mr. Bruner & Erwin Kim, but even if she doesn't think it's true, Darian & her mother are there for her as well.
Steinfeld has so many great monologue moments as well. Her monologue about her generation or her monologue in the bathroom at the frozen yogurt shop present a young actress that knows how to command a screen. Nadine is her breakthrough role, and I really hope she gets nominated for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes (that's the category she'd be nominated in if she is). It's a great performance for a great movie. I can't wait to buy this on DVD. The characters, the memorable scenes, the dialogue, Hailee Steinfeld's Nadine, navigating through adolescence, etc. make this a definite 5/5. The positive reviews and scores are well deserved. Everybody put their best foot forward and succeeded.
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