The introduction sets the thesis relatively, if a little thinly, well: an old-school Hollywood intro bleeds into the sounds of a modern LA traffic jam which then flightly goes into a musical and dance number where the various members of the traffic jam sing and express themselves in movement to suggest they are more than their trappings. It is the fantasy element of film giving way to the real doldrums of life, then finding solace in fantasy, which is the…

Combining and, in fact, magnifying the lame charting of addiction and relationship woes of Ponsoldt's previous film Smashed and the "always teetering on the edge of narcissistic angry white male privilege" symptoms of the writers' previous film 500 Days of Summer, The Spectacular Now arrives at one of the most embarrassingly thin and inept character pieces in recent history, a coming-of-age in which no one grows up and it could be argued in fact became more infantile as it buys…