The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

*** ½ out of ****

I was fifteen years old when “The Breakfast Club” (1985) was released, and it had a big impact on me. None of the six primary characters were actually much like me but I saw parts of myself in all of them, and their onscreen struggle to find their identities was one of the first times a high-school movie really resonated.

And though I would never argue with anyone calling “The Breakfast Club” the best high-school film ever, my personal favorite is “Pump Up The Volume” (1990). I wasn't a teenager anymore, but the lead character in that movie (Mark, played by Christian Slater) was someone I TOTALLY identified with. I WAS Mark Hunter in high school, I just never started a pirate radio station. So seeing someone on the screen that you think of as just like you is something I can identify with.

And that is what makes “The Edge of Seventeen” something special. In it, Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) is a high-school student with exactly one close friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson). She feels awkward in every last social situation unless it's just her and Krista together, which is when they feel comfortable, loose and can be themselves. Nadine has an older brother (Blake Jenner) who is extremely popular, an athlete, and a huge circle of friends. Nadine, of course, hates him and everything he represents.

So when her best friend Krista and her brother end up dating, Nadine feels abandoned, alone and willing to do virtually anything to try to better her situation. Or so she tells herself. Because she's not really willing to do anything at all to change her situation, she just wants to wallow in the unfairness of it all. This takes her on a few uncomfortable journeys, one including the boy she has a crush on, and another involving a boy who has a crush on her. But Nadine's personal inability to find any empathy with anyone always causes each situation to be a disaster.

The constant throughout it all is Mr. Bruner, her history teacher (Woody Harrelson). Easily my favorite role ever for Woody, he is the adult that always calmly says what every adult would want to say, but never does for fear of hurting a youth's fragile feelings. Basically he tries most to help by letting Nadine know that each problem she drops in his lap is her own, not something for him to fix for her. If more adults acted like this, perhaps the youth of today wouldn't enter their 20s with the same attitudes previous generations dropped when they entered their teens....

What make “The Edge of Seventeen” so wonderful is its universality. Nadine thinks herself a rebel, a social misfit and totally unique at the same time. However, she's just like everyone else – awkward, dying for acceptance and wishing she had the courage to let everyone know what only her best friend knows – that she's pretty cool if you give her a chance. But what she doesn't realize is that this is how EVERYONE, even the most popular kids, feel about themselves in high school. That when you're seventeen, your lack of understanding of your own identity makes everyone incredibly fragile. Some of us are just better at dealing with that than others.

This isn't the new “Breakfast Club”. But I bet for a lot of young girls out there it will be a new “Pump Up The Volume”. Just as I thought of myself as Mark from that movie, there are going to be a tremendous number of young girls who think of themselves as Nadine. And they will learn an important lesson from her – that once you can see past the fact that you're not the only person in the world, that other people's feelings matter just as much as your own, that's when you start to grow as a person and become an adult.

And watching Nadine do it is a lovely exercise in fun and pathos. I give it a very, very high recommendation.