'THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN' REVIEW.......REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE.

The Edge Of Seventeen (2016), a whip-smart, snappy update of those John Hughes/Molly Ringwald teen angst tours,  boldly threw itself into the multi-plexes during the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday movie logjam.....and promptly disappeared.  Since the BQ fondly remembered our first week managing a video store when '16 Candles' was the hot release of the week, we made an effort to catch up with this new 21st century take on the hellish life of a too-cool-for-school 11th grade girl.

             Given the frenzied pace of our social media era, everything in writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig's film comes at you faster.....the quips, the insults, the pop culture references, and the continuous onslaught of humiliating incidents piled on our put-upon, underestimated oddball Nadine. (Hailee Steinfeld)

                The movie has a live-wire MVP in Steinfeld, who tears into the role with motor-mouthed abandon and meets her match and deadpan foil in her dryly disinterested history teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson, generating laughs by simply waiting for a pause between Steinfeld's rants about her latest miseries.)

                Steinfeld's Nadine, a bullied, lonely outsider, has spent a gloomy lifetime living in the shadow of her ultra-popular handsome jock older brother.(Black Jenner)  The two lifelines she grasped to survive this childhood were her kind, loving father and  her one and only beloved friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson).  The film opens with Nadine's world continuing to go South......her dad's been dead for several years and she currently catches her best friend falling into bed and a relationship with her brother. Feeling utterly betrayed and alone, Nadine contemplates drastic, aggressive action with one boy she's crushing on, while tentatively beginning a friendship with another,  a fledgling filmmaker classmate who's nursing his own crush on Nadine. And we give thanks for the angst.....

              All the expected complications ensue, but Craig's script and direction throw a few new ingredients into the John Hughes formula.....including a surprise look at Harrelson's home life. Though burdened with a few missteps, it's mostly  a swift, breezy ride, energized by Steinfeld's full commitment to the role.

                One thing we hated: an unnecessary scene, begging for deletion,  where Steinfeld's made the butt of a joke that implies she's short and ugly......neither of which Steinfeld is.  We're guessing this gag was in the script before the cute-as-a-button Steinfeld was cast in a role written for a shorter actress, but left in the film anyway as a supposed guaranteed big yock. Doesn't make sense.   And after an hour and half of all this adolescent agita, the movie's quick lurch into feel-good-ism comes off as hurried and not quite genuine.

                But we can't say we didn't have a good time watching this and Hailee Steinfeld's fresh take on Molly Ringwald's hiccuping high school life saved the day......no grading on a curve needed, we hand out 3 stars. (***)