Thomas Lawler Reviews: Underage
LOGLINE: A 20-something ladies man has a drunken one-night stand with a girl who turns out to be an underage high school student and is blackmailed into being her boyfriend.
KEY BACKGROUND INFO: Screenwriting team Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (500 Days of Summer (their first spec script!) and The Pink Panther 2) have already sold Underage to Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Pictures (I Love You, Man). Named by Variety as one of 2008’s “10 Screenwriters to Watch.”
PLOT SYNOPSIS:
Act I:
When ANDY, a callous, directionless 20-something ladies man meets a mysterious girl, BRADEN, at a bar his string of uncomplicated one-night stands comes to a sudden halt when he finds out the next day that she is actually an underage high school student. Terrified at first, Andy is then sucker-punched when Braden reveals that unless he agrees to be her boyfriend until her graduation in June, she will report him to the police.
Cut to a long flashback where we learn that Braden has concocted this entire scheme as a way to get back at her ex-boyfriend, TIM, who cheated on her and that Andy has been chosen specifically because he’s a former graduate of her high school.
After getting further threatened by Braden at work and then being advised by his father, an attorney, that he should do whatever Braden asks because legally, her word is enough to prosecute, Andy reluctantly agrees to Braden’s scheme.
Act II:
Andy and Braden go on their first date and he admits he’s never gone on a real date before – only one-night stands. Braden begins tutoring him on a woman’s basic romantic needs (lots of calls, text messages and flowers).
Complications develop at a high school party, when Andy and Tim meet face-to-face and we find out that they’re cousins and that Braden picked out Andy specifically to get back at Tim. Andy is shocked at how cunning Braden has been, but realizes he still has to go along with her plan. Meanwhile, at school, Braden has regained her status with her friends due to her attractive older boyfriend and a jealous Tim warns Andy to stop seeing Braden.
Andy and Braden continue “dating” and gradually begin developing feelings for each other, which Andy confesses to his best friend, BRUCE. Andy and Bruce double-date with Braden and a female friend to their senior prom. Tim confronts Andy at the prom and beats up Andy for refusing to break up with Braden. Despite this, Andy and Braden continue dating (no quotes, but still no sex either) and growing closer until two key developments happen: 1) Andy is fired when the couple runs into his boss who discovers that Andy is dating an underage high school student and 2) Braden apologizes to Andy for costing him his job and confesses that she lied about having slept with Andy – he had been so drunk he passed out immediately after going home with Braden. When Andy realizes he’s been lied to and manipulated all this time, he immediately breaks up with Braden.
Act III:
While Braden attends her graduation alone and broken-hearted, Andy drowns his sorrows by resuming his one-night stands. Realizing that he needs more romantic fulfillment, he also seeks to recreate some of the adventures he had with Braden with his new dating partners (a la Annie Hall), but with little success. He takes a menial job at his father’s law firm and is generally depressed.
Later in the summer, Andy receives a letter informing him that he has an interview with an admissions officer at a local state college. Since he didn’t submit an application, an intrigued Andy goes to the interview. Asked by the admissions officer to reflect on his life, Andy realizes for the first time how much he’s grown through his relationship with Braden and how grateful he is for the experience.
Suddenly realizing that Braden is moving away any day to begin college, Andy immediately leaves the interview and actually chases her down to the airport. Andy catches her at the gate (surprise) and confesses his feelings for Braden. Braden thanks him and boards the plane, satisfied that her love was reciprocated, Andy is going to be OK and that she’s ready to begin her new college experience.
WHAT WORKS:
Premise: This is an interesting premise for a movie – with potential for good conflict since pretending to date an underage girl could have many farcical opportunities and obstacles (from friends, family, society) while avoiding the actual queasy reality of having sex with an underage girl.
Character: The character of Braden is dynamic and has a fresh, confident voice that you can easily imagine a young actress having a fun time portraying. Despite the heavy screentime however, she is a supporting character with little character growth here: she starts off as precocious and cunning on page 1 and certainly grows no dimmer as the story advances. While the character of Andy isn’t very interesting he does have a pronounced character arc (callous, superficial>romantic, introspective).
Theme: As the theme of your story is expressed in how your main character changes from the first page to the final page of your screenplay, Underage’s themes of “To learn how to love is to learn how to live” and perhaps even “It’s better to have loved and lost then to never have lost at all” are clearly expressed through several on-the-nose exchanges between Andy and Braden. If this wasn’t clear enough, we also get the dubious sequence with the college admissions officer at the state college in Act III in which Andy declares his love for Braden during his pre-admittance interview. (Since when did state colleges require in-person interviews?)
Genre: Since this screenplay is targeted for a mainstream audience, it’s important to include the elements of high school and romantic comedies that the audience is expecting. The script’s biggest genre calling card is its unique premise. Beyond this, the script includes a steady diet of genre staples and set pieces including a raucous high school house party, a meta dissection of romantic comedies, a romantic food fight, pop culture references, a prom sequence and even a chase and tearful finale at the airport.
WHAT NEEDS MORE WORK:
STRUCTURE/DRIVES:
Several of the screenplay’s drives have significant issues:
Objective: First off, due to the choices made the writers in Act I, it’s difficult to establish the main character and a compelling objective which significantly slows the momentum of Act I and brings it to crawl in Act II. Since we open on Andy on page 1, this is the key opportunity for the writers to introduce us to the drive (objective, story, character, theme, genre, entertainment) structure of this script. Although it’s logical to meet Andy on page 1 and establish that we’re in a romantic comedy (albeit a dark one), the decision to flash back on page 16 to explain Braden’s motivations is misguided. Braden is a secondary character of this screenplay, so her motivations should be secondary to Andy’s. Furthermore, a flashback literally stops your story cold and prevents your main character from pursuing his objective (which should be the sole purpose of your screenplay) so doing this for six pages is extremely ill-advised. Once we realize how much Braden has been pulling the strings, it makes Andy a very weak main character with a weak objective (to pretend to date Braden or risk going to jail). Since Andy simply has to date Braden until she graduates in June, there is really nothing to build to – the audience is simply waiting for the pages of the calendar to turn. The other problem is that Andy’s objective is to avoid a negative (going to jail) and that he doesn’t have a reward for which to strive.
Character: There are two fundamental types of elements that comprise a plot – events and decisions. The more events that happen to your main character and the less decisions he/she makes, the weaker your main character is. After Andy woos Braden on page 9, the next 20 pages of plot in Act I are all events happening to Andy or decisions Braden is making (e.g., Braden calling Andy at work and blackmailing him to date her, Braden deciding to seek revenge on her ex-boyfriend, Andy’s father telling him he has no choice but to go along with Braden’s scheme). Beyond being a weak main character, Andy is an uninteresting two-dimensional (He’s good-looking, a ladies man and a personal trainer? How unique and unexpected!) character who speaks in typical bro patter. Although the character arc requires him to start off as a cad, it takes until almost the end of Act II for Andy to exhibit human-like feelings of empathy and affection. Moreover, Andy has no contradictory qualities and no “dream” objectives. A fundamental part of all humans is that we dream about something better – beyond his next conquest at the bar, what’s Andy dreaming about? Who knows? The writers didn’t foreshadow that college is a dream of Andy’s – so the sequence late in Act III at the state college is unearned.
Story: Creating a satisfying, emotionally-involving story is not a mysterious process – it’s simply about having a sharply defined main character pursuing a compelling objective in spite of conflict — significant opposition and constantly rising stakes. Having already discussed the shortcomings of the objective and main character, let’s also note that this screenplay’s identified opposition, Tim, doesn’t declare himself to be Andy’s opposition until page 50 and they don’t interact again until their brief one-sided fistfight on page 83 – after which, despite winning the fight, Tim is dispensed with as an oppositional character (sorry, Tim). Other possible oppositional characters are non-factors since Andy’s parents are in on Braden’s scheme and the writers have blessed Braden’s father with a supernatural amount of trust in the dating habits of his high school daughter. With virtually no opposition and stakes that remain static (yes, she can call the cops, but that seems less and less likely as the story progresses), Act II suffers from endless conflict-free scenes of Andy and Braden getting to know each other such as a sequence of her forcing him to watch her favorite chick flicks, a driving montage set to an overly specific music reference (you can tell us the genre, but leave the band/song to the music rights exec) and getting into a foodfight at an apple orchard.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
- Character contrasts, catalyst characters: Since supporting characters exist solely to define and support your main character, this is typically done by surrounding your MC with characters that are different from them. The core relationship between Andy and Braden is compelling at times because these characters are opposites in many ways – Andy is older, callous, dim while Braden is young, romantic and wiser than her years. Braden is also an effective “catalyst” character – a character your story needs to help affect change in the main character (Andy). Secondary characters should not just be sounding-board buddies or exposition-messengers. As much as possible give your supporting characters interesting things to do.
- Visual motifs: The writers use monthly titles as visual motifs to indicate the story progression in Act II and III. Since Act II begins in March (according to the title) and we’ve established on page 15 that Braden’s high school graduation on June 10, we should expect that by the time we see the “May” title, we’re more than half way to Andy accomplishing his objective and resolving his story, right? Would you believe that the writers forgot/ignore this and actually have Braden’s graduation occurring in July? (More suspicious chronology: Braden doesn’t find out that she’s been accepted to Stanford until June.) Visual motifs can be a great way to mark progress toward your objective, but you can’t illogically bend them to suit your plot.
- Pre-page 1 inscriptions: In case there are any doubts about what the theme of this screenplay is, the writers helpfully include two extended quotations on love from Woody Allen on page 2. Show, don’t tell, please, and pre-pro writers should definitely not try this at home.
- Dialogue parantheticals, pointers: The writers have a bad habit of using parentheticals and underlined words in their dialogue to give guidance to the actor on line readings or to explain blocking. Don’t do it –- actors strongly resent this kind of help and character actions belongs in action lines. Make your dialogue as strong and specific as you can – and then leave it in the actor’s hands.
My rating?
[X] PASS
[ ] CONSIDER
[ ] RECOMMEND
Check out more:
HitFix Interview: ’500 Days of Summer’ screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
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View Comments to “Thomas Lawler Reviews: Underage”
Wow Thomas Lawler, you speak with such screenwriting authority. You recommend 'pass'? Pass for what? The fantasy world where you're an executive giving the go ahead for scripts? Dear MyPDFScripts, I dearly love you, but the use of Frustrated Screenwriters (TM) as reviewers brings the place down a notch.
Hey Dave, the “Pass” rating is simply a recommendation in regards to reading this version of the script. Thomas is entitled to his opinion, which he has posted here. It doesn't mean that he is right or wrong, but if you feel entitled to your own opinion regarding this script, I'd be more than happy to post your review of it as well. Multiple reviews of the same script are great for discussion.
First rate review here. Well thought out. Interesting points made concisely and intelligently.
First rate review here. Well thought out. Interesting points made concisely and intelligently.