October 13, 2006
LOS ANGELES TIMES
MOVIE REVIEW
'Nearing Grace'
A too-smart high school senior lazily seeks the meaning of life. His coming-of-age story is modest and somewhat miscast, yet it approaches the poetic.
By Michael Ordoña, Special to The Times
There are many reasons to be suspicious of "Nearing Grace," starting with the title. (Those gerund-woman's name labels are often harbingers of very bad things, or at least very ordinary things.) But this film is smart, funny and, thanks in no small part to David Geddes' cinematography, it occasionally approaches the poetic.
The setup is nothing new: It's a coming-of-age piece in the Jersey suburbs of the '70s, and its protagonist, Henry Nearing, is a self-absorbed, too-smart high school senior lazily seeking the meaning of life armed with a frown and a joint. Henry's quirky, pretty and equally bright best friend loves him, but he's obsessed with the local femme-fatale-in-training.
Henry's hyper-intelligent family disintegrates after the mother's funeral. The father, a ponytailed professor, quits his job, drinks a boatload of Scotch and buys a motorcycle he calls "Thanatos." Older brother Blair takes off on a drug-fueled journey of self-discovery. To Henry, he's part hero, part cautionary tale. What's a sullen teen to do but drop out himself?
The film is grown from the late Scott Sommer's novel "Nearing's Grace," and its literary roots are exposed by conceits such as nail-on-the-head character names. The searching protagonist is Henry Nearing; the best friend whose real value emerges after the mother's cremation is Merna Ash; the object of desire is Grace Chance. A forgiving guidance counselor, Clement C. Haydes, even says to Henry, who at a pot-smoking and depressed 17 can still pilot a small plane, "Think of yourself as a metaphor." Indeed.
Warts and all, "Nearing Grace" palpably captures the furtive glory of teenage first love, or lust, or whatever. The women are not weak, but complex. The family of wounded intellectuals is believably dysfunctional. And the dialogue is clever throughout. (In a picturesque moment of bliss after a long-awaited coupling, Henry asks, "Do you ever worry that the rest of your life will be anticlimactic?")
When the film fails to soar, it's largely because of an earthbound lead performance by Gregory Smith ("Everwood"). Smith does well enough conveying the nihilistic smart aleck, but his occasionally pushed delivery can derail key moments. He gets strong support from David Morse ("The Green Mile") as Henry's quietly heartbroken dad and the charmingly acidic Ashley Johnson as Merna.
"Nearing Grace" flies as smoothly as its sporadically likable lead can pilot it. Like Henry, its virtues outweigh its flaws.
Michael Ordoña
““...this film is smart, funny and, thanks in no small part to David Geddes’ cinematography, it occasionally approaches the poetic.”
Maitland McDonagh
““...vividly evokes the overwhelming intensity of teenage emotions...with excellent performances (which) give it depth and weight”
Directed by Rick Rosenthal and adapted from Scott Sommer's 1979 novel Nearing Grace by MEAN CREEK writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes, this intimate coming-of-age story benefits from excellent performances, notably Gregory Smith's (of TV's Everwood) as a teenager knocked off course by the repercussions of his mother's death.
The men of the suburban New Jersey Nearing family — middle-aged Shep (David Morse), a freewheeling college professor, older son Blair (David Moscow) and 17-year-old Henry (Smith) — know they adore Mama Rose (Shannon Day), but don't realize until she's gone that she's the glue holding them together. Within months of her death, Blair has taken off on a drug-fueled road trip with his free-spirited girlfriend, and Shep has quit working to devote himself to serious drinking. Henry appears to be keeping it together, going to school and continuing to hang out with his best friend, Merna Ash (Ashley Johnson), but he's emotionally unmoored and drifting into dangerous waters.
Merna and Henry are clearly made for each other — maybe not forever, but absolutely for now; a pair of smart, creative, hyper-articulate teenagers suspicious of both small-town conformity and faddish pop-culture attitudes could do worse than to navigate the transition from high school to college together. But Henry is oblivious to Merna's girlfriend potential and instead sets his sites on high-school heartbreaker Grace Chance (Jordana Brewster), a spoiled, insecurity-riddled rich girl with a jealous boyfriend. Grace traps Henry on an emotional roller coaster, responding to his advances and then turning a cold shoulder, coming back and rejecting him again. Henry sets fire to her boyfriend's car, retreats to the basement to ponder the meaning of life and emerges convinced there's no point in finishing his senior year — so what if he doesn't graduate? Supportive Merna does her best to pull him out of his funk but sensibly refuses to get mired in it: She's already been accepted to New York's Columbia University, where she plans to study music, and when Henry can't even commit to attending the prom with her, she invites her Columbia preadmissions mentor, an older student.
Sommer's novel is steeped in post-counterculture backlash and teen angst, and some of its narrative contrivances are unconvincing. But Smith vividly evokes the overwhelming intensity of teenage emotions without seeming like a privileged whiner and Brewster finds surprising complexity in Grace, who could easily have been a cliched, one-note bitch. The story is small, but their performances give it depth and weight.
Luke Y. Thompson
““a quietly effective number...cinematic youth has rarely seemed so convincingly uncertain...”
'Nearing Grace'
By Luke Y. Thompson Tuesday, Oct 3 2006
Nearing Grace
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
That title's bad enough, but it gets worse when you realize that it's derived from two lead characters actually named Grace (Jordana Brewster) and Henry Nearing (Gregory Smith). That aside, this '70s-era teen romance from the director of Halloween II and the screenwriter of Mean Creek is a quietly effective number, a little like an '80s John Hughes movie without the laughs (not an insult in this case). With his mother dead, his brother a moronic hippie, and his dad (David Morse) an alcoholic biker, young Henry drops out of high school and finds himself romantically torn between the longtime platonic best friend who wants him (Ashley Johnson) and the dangerous rich girl (Brewster) who wants his body, but only between trysts with her lunkhead jock fiancé (Chad Faust).
Yes, it culminates in a prom and a graduation speech, but the destination isn't really the point; cinematic youth has rarely seemed so convincingly uncertain, and Brewster could definitely drive a young guy crazy.
Kirk Honeycutt
““...the richness of the characters and themes...inspire a film with terrific emotional energy and larkish humor.”
Film review: Nearing Grace
By Kirk Honeycutt
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - While aspects of the story seem familiar, as coming-of-age stories often do, the richness of the characters and themes in "Nearing Grace" inspire director Rick Rosenthal and his cast to create a film with terrific emotional energy and larkish humor.
One of the pleasant surprises of the current Los Angeles Film Festival, "Nearing Grace" is that rare independent film that clearly was made outside of Hollywood without sacrificing the professional sheen Hollywood gives to a movie. The film is tailor-made for a studio classics division: It makes a nice crossover between a date movie for young people and a nostalgic period film for older adults.
At the top of the list of things the filmmakers did right is casting Gregory Smith, a young actor perhaps best known for his role on the WB Network series "Everwood," in the lead role of Henry Nearing. Smith establishes an intimacy with his audience, making transparent his character's raw feelings even as he hides them from other characters behind a wall of irony and reticence.
Supporting this potential break-out performance are superb turns by Ashley Johnson, as a neighbor whose fondness for Henry completely escapes his notice Jordana Brewster as the school vamp to whom Henry is irresistibly drawn and David Morse as a father at the end of his emotional rope.
Jacob Aaron Estes, screenwriter-director of last year's low-budget critical hit "Mean Creek," wrote the screen adaptation of Scott Sommer's novel "Nearing's Grace." (Notice the subtle change in the title.) The writing is witty and insightful, creating in each of the four main characters a strong individual with strong points of view.
The crux of the matter is the Nearing family's loss of its female leader. Rose, wife to Shep (Morse) and mom to Henry and Blair (David Moscow), died six months before. The time is the late '70s, when lifestyles and sexuality were undergoing tremendous change in American society. Rose's death removes the anchor to this suburban New Jersey family, letting each member drift into those swift-moving social currents. Dad quits his teaching job, grows his hair long, rides his bike around town and drinks himself senseless most nights. Blair splits, taking off with a hippie girlfriend in search of acid and experiences, some of which he might even remember. Henry changes the least outwardly; but inside, his life is in free-fall. Even if his mother hadn't died, Henry probably would have developed a strong attraction to the bewitching Grace (Brewster). But his pursuit of her becomes an obsession that a female role model might have prevented. Grace has a boyfriend in lacrosse champ Lance (Chad Faust). But she also loves to tease boys, and Henry becomes her latest victim. Henry's best gal pal Merna Ash (Johnson) drops hints of her interest in him, but Grace has blinded him to any other female. Henry drops out of school a month short of graduation. He retreats to the basement to, as he says, contemplate the "meaning of life." He might even discover at least one of its meanings when he realizes that wanting something is not the same thing as needing something.
Smith makes a lively and ingratiating protagonist even while making his gravest mistakes. Brewster has sexual allure as the serial seductress but makes us understand the boredom and disappointment that underlines her behavior. Johnson is a revelation: The actress is an unconventional beauty with the resources to suggest the longings and maturity of a young woman wise beyond her years. Morse, one of our best character actors, here portrays a man unapologetic about falling apart over his wife's death. Only Moscow's brother is poorly realized, dropping out for most of the movie, then popping up without much introduction and little to do.
The film has pros in all areas behind the camera, so the sterling look of the film, actually shot in Portland, Ore., belies its modest budget.
Scott Foundas
““a potent (film)...exactly the sort of under-the-radar movie that young people might really respond to if only it had a fighting chance against the assembly-line banalities that Hollywood hurls week after week at the sacrosanct 18-to-25 demographic.”
Nearing Grace
By SCOTT FOUNDAS
You’d need an astigmatism the size of Texas to miss any of the signposts of this 1970s-era coming-of-age drama: the restless smart-aleck teen (Gregory Smith) itching to bust out of his small-town environs (South Orange, New Jersey, to be exact); his nice-girl best friend (Ashley Johnson), whose longtime crush goes unnoticed and unrequited; the raven-haired siren (Jordana Brewster) who makes his adolescent loins burn with lust. But director Rick Rosenthal and screenwriter Jacob Aaron Estes (who wrote and directed the excellent youth drama Mean Creek) find a truthfulness lurking beneath that shopworn façade — their movie courses with the feeling of being in the waning days of high school and knowing you are destined for bigger things and thinking you might be in love and wondering what the fuck you want to do with the rest of your life.
If we’ve seen it all before, Nearing Grace’s mix of nostalgia and contempt for the follies of youth is a potent one. It’s exactly the sort of under-the-radar movie that young people might really respond to if only it had a fighting chance against the assembly-line banalities that Hollywood hurls week after week at the sacrosanct 18-to-25 demographic. The actors are superb — especially Smith, who exudes some of the live-wire charisma of the young Sean Penn in Rosenthal’s Bad Boys, and the smoldering Brewster, who transforms a potential vixen role into a complex portrait of a damaged young woman who uses her teasing sexuality as a defense against true intimacy.
NEARING GRACE
As coming-of-age films go, there's nothing necessarily new or unique about Nearing Grace, directed by Rick Rosenthal and adapted by Jacob Aaron Estes ( Mean Creek ) from the Scott Summer novel Nearing's Grace, except for the fact that it's so exceptionally well done, so exceedingly well-cast that it makes one realize how few such films actually succeed at all.
It's crazy enough being a teenager in 1979 suburban New Jersey, what with girl troubles, an uncertain future and the residual allure of a ‘60s lifestyle model that's fast nearing the end of its shelf life. But for Henry Nearing (Gregory Smith of TV's Everwood ), it all pales in comparison to the precipitous collapse of his family in the aftermath of his mother's death. Father Shep (David Morse) has retreated from normal life to become a dour, motorcycle-riding relic of a hippie while an elder brother Blair (David Moscow) has become an expert at running away, both literally and through the aid of controlled substances. Hormones are having their way with Henry, too, drawing him inexorably to the manipulative bad girl, Grace (Jordana Brewster), and rendering him unable to requite the affections of childhood friend Merna (Ashley Johnson), otherwise clearly his perfect match. But Henry is a sturdier soul than even he gives himself credit for, and before senior year is done, he'll be well on his way to understanding, if ever so slightly, what life and love are really all about.
Notwithstanding the familiar Pretty in Pink love triangulation, Nearing Grace is a wise and profoundly evocative film, a soulful remembrance of a forgotten, transitional generation wedged unceremoniously between Baby Boomers and Gen-X. It's a time that director Rick Rosenthal -- who came of age as a filmmaker around the same time -- clearly knows and remembers well. Rosenthal, too, has gone through a variety of transitions in his career, beginning with Halloween II, the acclaimed Bad Boys, one of Sean Penn's first major starring parts, and American Dreamer.
And with the help of Estes' sensitive, restrained adaptation and a surprisingly strong cast of young actors, each seemingly blessed with insights far beyond their years, Rosenthal is able to capture an elusive sense of feeling rare for a movie, much less a coming-of-age film. For Henry isn't so much an adolescent striving for adulthood as he is a nascent human being struggling with the clay that builds character. What most such films interpret as purely hormonal, Rosenthal and Estes see as philosophical -- and that, for those who've long since managed to get a handle on heir chemical natures, but not their actual natures, is the real essence of what it means to finally, at long last, come of age.
Wade Major
““...so exceptionally well done, so exceedingly well-cast that it makes one realize hoe few such films actually succeed at all.”
Nearing Grace
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Beyond the Box, opens October 13
That title's bad enough, but it gets worse when you realize that it's derived from two lead characters actually named Grace (Jordana Brewster) and Henry Nearing (Gregory Smith). That aside, this '70s-era teen romance from the director of Halloween II and the screenwriter of Mean Creek is a quietly effective number, a little like an '80s John Hughes movie without the laughs (not an insult in this case). With his mother dead, his brother a moronic hippie, and his dad (David Morse) an alcoholic biker, young Henry drops out of high school and finds himself romantically torn between the longtime platonic best friend who wants him (Ashley Johnson) and the dangerous rich girl (Brewster) who wants his body, but only between trysts with her lunkhead jock fiancé (Chad Faust). Yes, it culminates in a prom and a graduation speech, but the destination isn't really the point; cinematic youth has rarely seemed so convincingly uncertain, and Brewster could definitely drive a young guy crazy.