In the past year, love has been in the air in the world of cinema, with mature explorations of just what romance means to people. Richard Linklater blew us all away with his beautiful and realistic cinematic portrait of middle age romance in Before Midnight, while Nicole Holofcener delivered the fantastic romance-based Enough Said. There was a chance That Awkward Moment could do to twenty-year old love what those two films did to romance among folks in their forties, but upon the umpteenth mention of the word bro, those hopes will have long withered away.

For this financially well off, attractive group of twenty year old men, consisting of Jason (Zac Efron), Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan), the world of romance is complicated by the word responsibility. I mean, who needs that when dealing with women? After all, Mikey accepted responsibility in the form of marriage and look how that turned out (hint: not well). So they putter along in their ways, vowing to never get involved in a serious relationship, when all of a sudden Jason begins to have romantic feelings towards Ellie (Imogen Poots). Didn’t see that coming huh?

For any film where I’m supposed to be rooting for the protagonists to be victorious, there must be some sort of shade of likability to them. Trying to find any sort of upside to the character Zac Efron plays here, Jason, is impossible, considering most of the time he’s either whining or treating women like objects. He never improves himself, despite the film blatantly telling the audience that he’s gone through some sort of character arc, and the large amount of debauchery he commits isn’t even humorous to witness. By the film’s end, when he attempts to win back Ellie at a bookstore, trying to care about this character is beyond pointless and the whole sequence feels more like a parody than anything else.

Now, this may make it seem like I hated the film, which I kind of did, but at least it has some savings graces, which can be spoken of in four words and a single letter: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan. The two actors are easily the best part of this whole fiasco and it’s honestly bewildering that the two even signed up for this garbage, but thank god they did. Jordan shows some kind of maturity in the group, while Teller can tell a dirty joke like nobody else. The two can’t save this trainwreck, but I’m glad these rising stars at least tried.

The screenplay doesn’t give any actors, or even the directing, much to work with, considering it rests upon every cliche in the book without giving any of those cliches some kind of twist that makes them special or unique. Instead, it just settles for giving a portrait of the twenty-something in the year 2014, as a person who only cares about only viagra and booze. There’s no depth in it’s observations, nor likable personalities to cling onto. Needless to say, a film that showcases my age groups opinion of romance somehow made me hate my own generation, if only because it spawned a film as bad as That Awkward Moment.