[imagesource:justnowjeffrey.com]

Praised for its world-class production, beautiful cinematography, art direction, and catchy soundtrack, the newly released coming-of-age comedy Just Now Jeffrey has been snapped up by international film festivals in Toronto, Beverly Hills and Poland, as well as local cinemas Ster-Kinekor, Nu Metro, the Labia and Bioscope.

If the trailer is anything to go by, this film might just hit the funny spot in a way that Lipstick Dipstick managed back in the day.

Written and directed by Brett Morris and Hylton Tannenbaum, the film features some of our best comedic talent including Rob van Vuuren, Nicky Rebelo, Nik Rabinowitz, Natasha Loring, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Mila Rayne and Meghan Oberholzer.

Newcomers Julian Robinson and Dino Vavatzanidis take the lead as two hapless teens dealing with hormonal life in Johannesburg during the late 198os.

Teenager Jeffrey Greenbaum (Robinson) just wants to get laid, and convinces his best pal Brad Berman (Vavatzanidis), to help devise a strategy to lose their virginity before they finish high school. Things obviously don’t go as planned and Jeffrey and Brad soon become entangled in a crazy web of love, lust, videotape piracy, rugby violence, political protest and pornography.

“People always ask what is it that festivals look for in a film, and we say something we’ve never seen before. And Just Now Jeffrey is just that. We’d never seen a coming of age film set in South Africa in the 1980’s, with world class production values”

Although there are strong Poena is Koning vibes, the film is a step beyond the cringy 2007 Afrikaans film that spawned so many one-liners and launched Robbie Wessels’ career.

Notably, the soundtrack is awesome, with a combination of original music scored by Alun Richards, and a wide range of local and international 1980s hits by artists including Twisted Sister, Soft Cell, Joy, Petit Cheval, Cinema, Sweatband, Wonderboom and Sipho Hotstix Mabuse.

“Just Now Jeffrey has been several years in the making. It was our intention to create a unique coming-of-age comedy that represents and normalises our youths as teens growing up in 1980s South Africa. We have also always wanted to give a voice to a generation that grew up in South Africa towards the end of apartheid. We found that South Africans were generally painted with the same brush, and we wanted to show all of the complexity and nuances across the political spectrum during that time: from right to left and everything in between.”

If you were a teenager growing up in the 80s, you’d know.

Just Now Jeffrey is in cinemas now. Watch the trailer below:

[source:goodthingsguy]