Quitters is a coming-of-age dramedy riddled with reminders of some of our favorite coming-of-age dramedies. Kara Hayward of Moonrise Kingdom plays a moody teen, Kieran Culkin of Igby Goes Down plays a burned-out teacher, and our main character, Clark, is something of a mix of Igby and a millennial in Holden Caulfield. But unlike Igby or Holden, Clark isn’t running away from something—he’s running toward something he’s never had, but always wanted.
The debut feature from Noah Pritzker and co-writer Ben Tarnoff stars newcomer Ben Konigsberg as Clark, the son of parents Roger (Greg Germann) and May (Mira Sorvino). When an accident unearths the tension and drama that was just boiling beneath the surface, May heads to rehab and Clark jumps ship to find a family elsewhere. The film follows his quest to find something resembling a home as he hops from one broken family to the next.
It’s a depressing storyline, yet there’s the potential for some rich character study here. Unfortunately, the direction and the pacing are lethargic and unfocused. Pritzker and Tarnoff have sketched a decent outline, but the characters they use to illustrate the piece will leave you wanting more. Nevertheless, some of their performers manage to keep you engaged and interested ‘til the end.
Culkin always entertains when he commits to a role, and that’s no different with his turn here. And despite the script’s dearth of development, Germann stands out by rising above the bad dad caricature and creating some semblance of a sympathetic, understandable character. However, a young star on the rise upstages them and the rest of the cast—and it’s not Konigsberg. Morgan Turner steals the show as Natalia, a teen who Clay finds himself drawn to as he stays with her family. Turner delivers her lines with a piercing, pitch perfect sincerity that is both touching and the film’s sole source of true joy. In fact, Konigsberg’s Clay may be the most uninteresting character in the film. The uneven script doesn’t do him any favors, but the young actor brings no flare, and you would be forgiven for thinking that it’s not really an actor playing a disinterested teen—Konigsberg just isn’t interested in the film.
From the moment May crashes her car, Quitters feels as if it’s moving slowly but surely towards some other accident or a big, tragic climax. In the meantime, it veers between genre lanes—swerving from a mildly successful but brief stint as a black comedy, to a commentary on the meaning of love and family. By the time that big climax never happens, you’ll probably be reeling from a little narrative whiplash. But perhaps it’s a good thing, because what seemed like a predictable wreck of a movie leaves us just a little surprised.
