Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan, & Miles Tellers Cringey Rom-Com Was Vital

May 2024 · 7 minute read

The Big Picture

Think back for a second to where you were around 2014. Perhaps you were in a different job, or you were in a relationship that molded the direction of your life for years to come. The city or even country you call home could be entirely different. Whether we realize it or not, our lives are constantly shifting, pointing us in new directions that we can’t even begin to imagine. What’s normal one year can sound like it came from another dimension just ten years later. If that sounds ludicrous, well, just ask the three famous leading men of a 2014 romantic comedy written by Tom Gormican.

The motion picture we're referring to is That Awkward Moment.Since its release, it's largely vanished from the cultural radar in the years, and for good reason. It's a very generic and unfunny movie. However, what's intriguing about That Awkward Moment is the three leading men were Zac Efron, Miles Teller, and Michael B. Jordan. Each were about to leap into new chapters of their career, but not before headlining a subpar rom-com. In hindsight, That Awkward Moment was an awkward detour for all three of these actors before they moved on to profoundly different things that make it hard to imagine any of them being involved in this feature.

That Awkward Moment
RComedyRomance

Three best friends find themselves where we've all been - at that confusing moment in every dating relationship when you have to decide "So...where is this going?"

Release Date January 31, 2014 Director Tom Gormican Cast Zac Efron , Miles Teller , Michael B. Jordan , Imogen Poots , Mackenzie Davis , Jessica Lucas Runtime 94 minutes Main Genre Comedy

Where Did “That Awkward Moment’s” Leading Men Go After This Movie?

In January 2014, when That Awkward Moment hit theaters, Efron, Teller, and Jordan were in the infancy of their stardom. Efron was still shaking off the shadow of Troy Bolton from High School Musical, a person he’d been shedding in the early 2010s through romantic dramas like The Lucky One. Teller, meanwhile, was a fresh-faced actor known for playing high school students in The Spectacular Now and Footloose, while Jordan had earned acclaim in 2013 for his work headlining the Ryan Coogler drama Fruitvale Station. Although none of the actors were unknown to the general audience, they weren't A-listers yet. A rom-com like That Awkward Moment made sense for them, especially Efron, who likely saw the feature as a great way to further distance himself from the Walt Disney movie.

That Awkward Moment flopped badly, killing off any chances for the trio to become fixtures of the rom-com genre. However, just after this motion picture crashed and burned, Efron finally found a niche he could sink his teeth into as a leading man: R-rated comedies. Neighbors in May 2014 redefined Efron’s image as a movie star and suddenly, a new era for this man dawned. The cozier R-rated laughs of That Awkward Moment were a thing of the past. Soon, he’d be doing cocaine in Dirty Grandpa or ingesting fluids from a dead man in Baywatch. Save for his return to musicals in The Greatest Showman, his departures outside the R-rated comedy genre would be in darker features like Firestarter and The Iron Claw.

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Miles Teller Found a Niche in Intense Blockbuster Movies

Teller arguably had an even greater career transformation in the aftermath of That Awkward Moment thanks to Whiplash, which technically premiered 12 days before That Awkward Moment at the Sundance Film Festival. With this feature, Teller plunged headfirst into leaving laughs behind. Teller was now a man dedicated to intense motion pictures, all about the extremes people go to for very specific occupations. In Bleed for This, Teller played a boxer pushed to the limit, while Thank You For Your Service saw Teller portraying a soldier grappling with his mental health after returning home. Even his one foray into superhero films (Fantastic Four) had the same drama and intensity that would later be found in your typical MCU picture.

In the 2020s, Teller would carve out a traditional blockbuster leading man career thanks to his work in Top Gun: Maverick and the upcoming motion picture The Gorge. In That Awkward Moment, Teller was clearly meant to play the nerdy but handsome and confident foil to the traditionally attractive Efron and Jordan. That kind of persona was left in the dust in the years that followed, as Teller aged up his characters (he plays fathers in Service and Only the Brave) and kept choosing roles that emphasized his physical prowess. The archetype he inhabited for That Awkward Moment was not going to be the norm for the rest of his career, especially in terms of tone. Darker roles were calling Teller and That Awkward Moment now stands out as an odd early outlier in a filmography defined by brutal movies like Whiplash.

Michael B. Jordan Especially Found Success After “That Awkward Moment”

Close

If anyone’s career really went in a different direction after That Awkward Moment, it was Michael B. Jordan. Just under two years after this rom-com, Jordan would headline Creed, a sports drama that unleashed a universe of new opportunities for this actor. This acclaimed box office hit catapulted him to stardom while his iconic villain work in Black Panther further cemented him as a movie star. Black Panther starred Jordan opposite Chadwick Boseman and captivated moviegoers around the world with its enthralling vision of Erik Kilmonger. It was no longer possible to imagine this actor headlining a romantic comedy unless he was the lead character. The days of Jordan getting an on-screen acting credit beneath Efron and Teller were thoroughly behind him.

Of course, one element that makes the idea of these three men headlining a romantic comedy like That Awkward Moment a strange proposition these days is the state of the genre itself. The 2014 feature came at the tail end of the romantic comedy being a regular staple in theaters. When That Awkward Moment debuted, Netflix still had yet to embrace original movies. Major studios were still putting out comedies and romantic comedies alike in multiplexes. Although the genre may be making a comeback, there are still so few opportunities for theatrical entries in this domain that it’s difficult to imagine a new rom-com scoring these same leading actors at their current caliber.

Even the directorial choice for That Awkward Moment feels like a departure from the kind of filmmakers this trio of leading men work with in the modern world. Gormican was making his feature-length directorial debut with That Awkward Moment, rendering him the sort of fresh-faced director that Efron, Teller, and Jordan rarely dabble with today. The drastic shift in the type of directors each actor has worked with is just one of the many ways That Awkward Moment is evidence of ten years of evolution in the American cinema scene. In January 2014, it wasn’t a peculiar proposition to imagineEfron, Teller, and Jordan headlining a romantic comedy together. For that matter, it was expected that there’d always be a romantic comedy playing in your local theater. Efron was still struggling to define himself beyond High School Musical, and Jordan and Teller were still searching for their niches in Hollywood. Time changes us all, after all, even the three male actors forever frozen in dumbfounded expressions on the poster for That Awkward Moment.

That Awkward Moment is available on Starz in the U.S.

Watch on Starz

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