First Trailer & Poster For ‘The Spectacular Now’ Starring Shailene Woodley & Miles Teller

Fans of James Ponsoldt’s 2012 indie hit, Smashed, can rejoice: the trailer for his latest picture, The Spectacular Now, has popped up online. Coming on the heels of high praise from Sundance (as well as smaller festivals like the Independent Film Festival of Boston), the film follows gregarious, directionless high school senior Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) as he parties and drinks his way through his final year of secondary education. He also falls in love with Aimee Finicky (Shailene Woodley), the quiet, nice girl he never thought twice about until the morning he woke up after passing out on her lawn.

The trailer deserves a caveat of sorts. While The Spectacular Now does indeed contain a great deal of feel-good material, it’s also incredibly raw, packing an emotional wallop alongside its infectious charm and sense of humour. A number of critics have drawn comparisons between The Spectacular Now and the work of John Hughes, which feels apt; Ponsoldt, however, goes to darker depths in telling Sutter’s tale, something that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has seen Smashed. The footage here does a great job capturing the more comic aspects of the film while only hinting at its struggle, which is probably for the best.

What the preview does convey is how much of the movie revolves around the performances of Teller and Woodley. Viewers might recognize Teller from films like Rabbit Hole and Footloose (2011), but everyone surely knows Woodley courtesy of her work in The Descendants (and because she’s set to play Mary-Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 & 4).

Here’s the official synopsis for The Spectacular Now:

With sly humor and an intensity of feeling, THE SPECTACULAR NOW (directed by James Ponsoldt) creates a vivid, three-dimensional portrait of youth confronting the funny, thrilling and perilous business of modern love and adulthood. This is the tale of Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), a high school senior and effortless charmer, and of how he unexpectedly falls in love with “the good girl” Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley). What starts as an unlikely romance becomes a sharp-eyed, straight-up snapshot of the heady confusion and haunting passion of youth – one that doesn’t look for tidy truths. The film was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber (500) DAYS OF SUMMER and also features wonderful supporting turns from Brie Larson, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The Spectacular Now arrives in theaters August 2nd, 2013.