Everybody Wants Some review

Director Richard Linklater has never been known as a plot-driving storyteller. His movies generally focus on his characters and the conversations they have on camera. The settings and time also play a big part in informing these conversations, which, in the case of “Before Sunrise,” “Slacker” and even last year’s Oscar-nominated “Boyhood,” tend to highlight the natural cadence of the mundane, the comic and the self-gratifying ah-ha moments of armchair philosophy. His latest comedy “Everybody Wants Some” reunites Linklater with one of his favorite age-groups, the recently enlightened college student, as he explores the dreams and desires of a group of baseball players who’re meeting each other for the first time.

Based loosely on the director’s own life-experience, the film takes place at the Texas university in 1980, the weekend before class is set to begin for our characters. Blake Jenner plays our point of view Jake, a confident freshman who has to learn quickly what the masculine hierarchy is within the off-campus house he and his fellow ball-players will spend the semester. There he meets a diverse range of All-American, corn-fed athletes that include McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin), the hot-headed rooster of the house, Finnegan (Glenn Powell), the wise-cracker who has a theory about everything, and Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), the stoner shaman who seems wise beyond his years. Jake has to carve out his own role and function within the long-standing traditions of this established group while they go out, dance the disco, and crash theater parties, looking to meet chicks and get loaded.

This has been marketed as Linklater’s ‘spiritual sequel’ to his 1993 cult-comedy “Dazed and Confused,” and because of the retro period, because it’s ensemble piece featuring a young, mostly unknown cast and because of the lackadaisical way the director decides to structure the events of the story, it’s a comfortable comparison to make. Of course the classic rock and roll soundtrack and the many scenes of peer-group hazing also helps. After the end of high school exhalation of Dazed, this film picks up with the sense of self-discovery and freedom that comes with the early college experience. Keep in mind, these guys were all the favored jocks of their High Schools, so the coming of age portrayed here is paved for more of a successful transition than many leaving home for the first time.

The stakes are low and the drama isn’t immediately apparent, but the film hints at a broader message about defining yourself as an independent person. Jake’s peer group is like-minded and single-minded when it comes to their tireless search for alcohol and sexual conquest, but underneath all the party-time Linklater exposes a coded form of existential subtext about going your own way and the seeds of individuality that are planted by the happenstance moments of our lives. Jakes budding relationship with a theater geek named Beverly (Zoey Deutch) explicates this theme as her art world contrasts with that the house’s beer-soaked, competitive masculinity. I probably would have liked to see a bit more between these actors than we got, as Deutch is the only substantive female role in the picture, but its minor inclusion is saved for significant narrative impact.

Though the film is never begging to be loved and Linklater’s natural comedy breathes far more than then what we’re used to these days, there’s a lot to appreciate about “Everybody Wants Some.” It’s an entertaining hang-out flick full of great performances and memorable characters. The period sets and consume are varied and authentic and the movie both pokes fun at the era while portraying it with warm nostalgia. I find myself wanting more as the film only hints at its most compelling beats before drifting off into yet another scene of “Animal House” styled debauchery, but after I found locked in step with the movie’s rhythm I became fully immersed in this virile jock world and was curious to see where these guys would end up by the end of the school year.  

Grade: B 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Everybody Wants Some."

Boyhood review

                 Since emerging from and headlining the indie film explosion of the early ‘90s, Austin Texas director Richard Linklater has never been content to stay in familiar territory, constantly pushing himself into unexplored and challenging storytelling avenues. While contemporaries such as Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith were defining their brand and building a devoted fanbase on genre familiarity, Linklater strove to try new things and ignore all expectations.  Later on when he would occasionally make a mainstream comedy like “School of Rock,” in the context of his wildly diverse career even that felt like formal experiment to make a movie in direct opposition to his interest in narrative stream-of-consciousness, displayed in films such as “Slacker” and “Waking Life.”

                With this in mind, it seems only fitting that Linklater would be using his off-time between the  shoots of his regular film schedules to whittle away at a 12 year passion project, documenting the growth and the age of the same cast around the malleable blueprint of a plot. “Boyhood,” in many ways, is the ultimate thesis of Linklater’s formal interests in storytelling and character examination through means of pure cinema. Of course, all of this would mean a whole lot of nothing if it weren’t also emotionally engaging, brutally honest and surprisingly funny.

                On the surface this film tells the story of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a Texas-born child named named Mason (Ellar Coltrane) as hewho transitions from childhood to manhood, starting at age six when the production began in 2002 and ending with his move to college in 2014. Certainly, the movie’s center of consciousness is with Mason and he's our emotional conduit through the broader story of his broken family (and to a greater extent, the condition of post-911 Americana). But it is within the journey of his formative years that the lives of his parents also play out in subtle complexity.  After a rocky divorce his mother, played by Patricia Arquette, goes back to college to make a better living for Mason and his older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), and his father, played by Ethan Hawk, also makes his transition from deadbeat struggling musician to accepting eventual responsibility.  Each story interweaves and informs the other, creating a breathy, yet dense emotional tapestry of modern suburban angst.

                By casting a six year old unknown and hoping that he would appropriately age into the role, Linklater gambled on the entirety of the film’s artistic success on this actor, and luckily for him the experiment pays off without ever feeling like a needless gimmick or publicity stunt.  Earlier on  Coltrane's performace is interior and quietly effecting, oftentimes letting the louder characters in his scenes shape his on screen personality through contrast. As he grows the character slowly exposes a firmer identity and develops from a cypher of our own nostalgia into having his own distinct perspective and intellectual agency. Both Ethan Hawk and Patricia Arquette are better here than they may have ever been before and, impressively, they sustain their performance over the long period, infusing their characters with the natural growth they have accumulated both as actors and as people. Simply put, they ‘act’ real, and the significant trick that the movie plays on the audience is that after a while you stop thinking about production’s logistics.

                Almost a formal cousin to Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” trilogy, this film is interested in the deep exploration of character through dialogue, social milieu, and scenic rhythms in editing that outlines the passage of time.  Because of the purposely fluid nature of the plot—oftentimes avoiding the kinds of traditional conceits and beats of more rigorously written coming of age dramas—“Boyhood” may alienate some audiences hoping for the excitement of rising tensions, the exuberance of an underlined ‘ah-ha’ moment, or the comfort of resolution.  What you get instead is a teenage life lived in all its messy and glorious intricacies.

Grade: A-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Aug-2014