''The Year of Spectacular Men'' is a 2017 American

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

film directed by

Lea Thompson Lea Katherine Thompson (born May 31, 1961) is an American actress and director. She is best known for her role as Lorraine Baines-McFly in the Back to the Future (franchise), ''Back to the Future'' film trilogy (1985–1990) and Beverly Switzl ...

in her feature film directorial debut. It stars Thompson's daughters Madelyn Deutch (who also wrote the screenplay and composed the score) and

Zoey Deutch Zoey Francis Chaya Thompson Deutch ( ; born November 10, 1994) is an American actress. She is daughter of director Howard Deutch and actress-director Lea Thompson. She gained recognition for her roles in the film '' Everybody Wants Some!!'', the ...

(who also produced). Thompson's husband

Howard Deutch Howard Deutch (born September 14, 1950) is an American film and television director who worked in collaboration with filmmaker John Hughes, directing two of Hughes's best-known screenplays, ''Pretty in Pink'' and '' Some Kind of Wonderful''. Sinc ...

also served as a producer. Izzy Klein is a young woman fresh out of college as she strikes up and ends relationships with a few men, and struggles to navigate the failures of post-college adulthood, leaning on her mother and younger sister for support. The film had its world premiere on June 16, 2017, at the

LA Film Festival The LA Film Festival was an annual film festival that was held in Los Angeles, California, and usually took place in June. It showcased independent, international, feature, documentary and short films, as well as web series, music videos, episod ...

. It was released in theaters, on digital HD and through

video-on-demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

services on June 15, 2018, by

MarVista Entertainment MarVista Entertainment is an American production company, based in Westwood, Los Angeles, California. The company mainly provides financing and some original content, mainly made-for-TV films and direct-to-SVOD titles, many of which are carried b ...

Plot

The film opens with five different men commenting on their perspective of Izzy Klein. Sabrina, her very successful Hollywood actress sister, encourages her to finish her degree and then take a gap year. At home in her boyfriend Aaron's NYC apartment, Izzy talks about Sabrina's proposal but he is less than supportive and quickly gets upset. He's insecure, equating her going with her sister with his band leaving him. Izzy goes, taking her things to Sabrina's hotel room. Sabrina sees Izzy in the morning, a total mess in the disastrous-looking corner of the hotel room, and offers to let her move in with her and her boyfriend in LA – under the stipulation that she pick up after herself. Izzy has to work on a scene from a Shakespeare play to pass a course to complete her degree. A theatre minor, Ross, is assigned to work with her, and she's very attracted but he seems oblivious. The girls' mom, Deb, goes to Izzy's college graduation, and afterward they go to lunch with Amythyst, Deb's very young "soul walker". She's not much older than Izzy, a vegan into yoga who's recently taken Deb with her on a retreat. Deb is openly critical of Izzy's life decisions, although Izzy is supportive of her mother's relationship. In LA, Izzy moves in with Sabrina and boyfriend Sebastian. They take her to a party where Sabrina plans to help her network, but before she can, Izzy hooks up with Aaron's former drummer, Logan. They continue seeing each other until he goes on tour a few months later. Sabrina returns home after a film's promotional tour with Zack Ephron. Izzy's had a few unsuccessful auditions and her agent has dumped her, so she announces that she's finished. She spends the next few months in her room, binge-watching programs on her laptop. Izzy goes out to see Logan's band when they return in December, coming face to face with Aaron, who's been invited to the gig. She goes off with Logan, who tells her he's back with his ex. Upset, she leaves and is followed out by Aaron and they argue. The girls meet their mom for Christmas in

Lake Tahoe Lake Tahoe (; was, Dáʔaw, meaning "the lake") is a Fresh water, freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada of the United States. Lying at , it straddles the state line between California and Nevada, west of Carson City, Nevad ...

– it's the first time Sabrina is meeting Amythyst, as she is blindly loyal to their dead dad's memory. Izzy meets a ski patroller, Mikey, and she convinces her sister and Sebastian, who are fighting over the tabloids' insinuations of her and Ephron, to go with her to meet Mikey for a drink. Deb and Amythist are already in the tavern when they arrive. Soon Deb has to leave so Sabrina, still upset with Sebastian, goes with her. Izzy goes home with Mikey, spending the whole night chatting, while Sebastian is left with Amythyst. The next morning, both Deb and Sabrina's relationships are over. Izzy accompanies Sabrina on a film shoot in San Francisco as her assistant. Izzy chats with the film's director, Charlie, and lets him in on a secret that she and her mom are keeping from Sabrina. Over the next few months, Sebastian keeps sending Sabrina flowers, which she throws away. Izzy gets closer to Charlie, but when they're finally alone, she finds the painfully shy young director is so introverted he has never been completely intimate with anyone. Sabrina finally gets a card with the flowers, convincing her to take Sebastian back. The sisters return to LA, with Izzy's gap year completed and a calm sense of optimism.

Cast

* Madelyn Deutch as Izzy Klein *

as Sabrina Klein, Izzy's younger sister *

as Deb Klein, Izzy and Sabrina's mother *

Melissa Bolona Melissa Boloña (born December 28, 1989) is an American actress and model. She starred in the films '' Acts of Violence'', '' The Hurricane Heist'', ''Malicious'', and '' Dog Eat Dog''. Early life and education Boloña was born in Connecticut, ...

as Amythyst Stone *

Nicholas Braun Nicholas Joseph Braun (born May 1, 1988) is an American actor. He is known for his role as Greg Hirsch in the HBO series ''Succession'' (2018–present), for which he has received two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supp ...

as Charlie Reed *

Avan Jogia Avan Tudor Jogia (; born February 9, 1992) is a Canadian actor. He first received recognition for portraying Danny Araujo in the television film '' A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story'' (2006). After moving to the United States in his late te ...

as Sebastian Bennett, Sabrina's boyfriend *

Cameron Monaghan Cameron Riley Monaghan (born ) is an American actor and model. He is known for his role as Ian Gallagher on the Showtime comedy-drama series '' Shameless'' and as twins Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, who serve as origins for the Joker, on th ...

as Ross Wyatt *

Brandon T. Jackson Brandon Timothy Jackson (born March 7, 1984) is an American actor and stand-up comedian. He is known for his roles in the films '' Roll Bounce'' (2005), ''Tropic Thunder'' (2008), '' Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief'' (2010), '' ...

as Logan *

Zach Roerig Zachary George Roerig (born February 22, 1985) is an American actor, known for his roles as Casey Hughes on ''As the World Turns'', Hunter Atwood on ''One Life to Live'' and Matt Donovan on ''The Vampire Diaries''. Early life Roerig was born i ...

as Mikey *

Jesse Bradford Jesse Bradford (born May 28, 1979) is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor at the age of five and received two Young Artist Award for Best Leading Young Actor in a Feature Film nominations for his performances in ''King of the ...

as Aaron Ezra * Bob Clendenin as Seven * Alison Martin as Marg * Troy Evans as Sketch * Alec Mapa as Overzealous Casting Director

Production

In September 2015, it was announced that Lea Thompson is making her feature film directorial debut in this film, starring her actress daughters Madelyn Deutch and Zoey Deutch. Filming started later that month in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. ''The Year of Spectacular Men'' is produced by Parkside Pictures and Tadross Media Group. Producers are Parkside's Damiano Tucci and Danny Roth along with Gordon Gilbertson and

; executive producers are Michael Tadross Jr. and Christopher Conover. Zoey also shares the production credit.

Release

''The Year of Spectacular Men'' held its world premiere at the

on June 16, 2017, under the "LA Muse" section. It also had its screenings at the Twin Cities Film Fest, the

LA Femme Film Festival LA Femme International Film Festival focuses on platforming women filmmakers, "by women, for everyone". The Festival was created in 2005, to answer the need to enhance women behind the camera as directors, producers, and writers. It was the first ...

and the 20th-anniversary edition of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival in October 2017, and at the

Napa Valley Film Festival Napa or NAPA may refer to: Places * Napa, California, the county seat of Napa County, California * Napa County, California, United States * Napa River, California * Napa Valley AVA, an "American Viticultural Area" designated wine region * Ran ...

in November 2017. In January 2018,

acquired distribution rights to the film. The film is scheduled to be released on June 15, 2018. It was released in theaters, on digital HD and through

services on June 15, 2018.

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 65%, based on 31 reviews, and an average rating of 6/10. The site's consensus states; "Lea Thompson proves as capable behind the camera as her daughters are before it in

he film He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

though its charming sensibilities are at times overshadowed by an inconsistent script." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on eight critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Sheri Linden of ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...

'' described the film as "smart and vivacious when it isn't trying too hard" and added "for the twentysomethings with whom the movie is sure to click, the sarcastic jabs at such easy targets as health-conscious New Age types might feel fresh rather than strained. But even with the screenplay's sometimes screechy missteps, the Deutch duo hold the screen with charm and intelligence to spare". Scott Menzel of We Live Entertainment wrote that "Madelyn Deutch, Zoey Deutch, and Lea Thompson are a triple threat in this quarter life crisis tale that deserves your attention".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Year Of Spectacular Men, The 2017 films 2017 comedy-drama films 2017 directorial debut films 2017 independent films American comedy-drama films American independent films Films about sisters Films set in Los Angeles Films set in New York City Films set in San Francisco Films shot in Los Angeles Films shot in New York City Films shot in San Francisco 2010s English-language films Films directed by Lea Thompson 2010s American films