While We’re Young offers plenty of caustic insights into contemporary bourgeois-bohemian lifestyle, plus a great deal of more ambitious philosophical inquiry, and for the most part- for the most part-Baumbach pulls it all off with lightness, delicacy, and that rare quality, joy. But this is probably unfair to Baumbach, a much wittier, more graceful filmmaker than Reitman. It’s a nice point, concisely made, but it worried me that Baumbach was overplaying his “How We Live Today” card-possibly because I’m still getting over the overzealous “alarm call” literalness of Jason Reitman’s indigestible Men, Women, & Children. Whereas it’s the older, hidebound couple who live in the world of present-day connectivity: we see them at home checking their mobiles, watching TV online, reading Kindles. The latter cultivate-or seem just organically, with innate coolness, to have-a connection with the past and with archaic forms like VHS tapes, board games, vinyl LPs. It’s one of the film’s many juxtapositions of the lifestyle of Josh and Cornelia (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) who are in their mid-to-late forties, settled and somewhat jaded, and that of indefatigably enthusiastic, creative young hipsters Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). First you think, “Neat cultural apercu,” then you worry that perhaps Baumbach hit the Zeitgeist Analysis button a little too neatly on cue. It's not his best, but doesn't fall far from his gold standard (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha).There’s a moment in Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young that makes you do a double take. Baumbach drives this home with his usual insightful wit and in-the-moment camerawork. Both of them - young and young at heart - want what the other has, however, and each for selfish and ulterior motives. Astute and unsettlingly honest observations get leveled by peers their own age as Stiller and Watts envy the perpetual motion and spontaneity of modern 20-somethings as well as their unbridled passion for vintage items (i.e., "everything that we threw away"). It's smart if you fall outside of the age pools depicted here and it smarts if you fall within, especially if you're approaching the big Four Oh from either direction. In this R-rated comedy from Noah Baumbach (Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg), a middle-aged couple's (Stiller, Watts) career and marriage get overturned when a disarming young couple (Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried) enters their lives. In fact, it's honest and very human-one of the many truisms emerging here we hate to admit. It's a startling revelation that's not a revelation. One 40-something character - so genuinely tough on Stiller's new choice of friends at the outset - confesses that, despite admitting that having a baby imbues you with a deep-seeded love, the most important person in his life remains himself. In fact, the film hands out some winning Reality Bytes to this twosome and anyone who pines for their younger days. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, however, hilariously fall into this trap in an on-the-nose film that's deeper and more convoluted than at first glance. Peter Pan never grew up, but - if he did - he hopefully wouldn't emulate Brooklyn hipsters. Hitting Generation X right in their Millennials, Noah Baumbach's latest comedy hilariously asks Y of Middle Age as it winningly straddles the generational divide. Overall, while not all that profound, Baumbach proves to be an excellent story-teller and fascinating artist. The film's resolution (its final moments, not the genius send-up of "the great detective's reveal") is far too pat for my tastes, but that doesn't besmirch the fact that so much of what came before hit all the right notes. It's clear that he wants to explore the former group of themes and occasionally digress into pedantry about the nature of art in documentary films, but While We're Young's primary strength is that it avoids too much didacticism.īen Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, and Amanda Seyfried all give excellent performances, but it's Stiller who most clearly understands Baumbach's unique blending of character development and thematic exploration, and his performance is the most honed - probably the result of his experience in other Baumbach films. Writer/director Noah Baumbach fashions a simple but affecting story contrasting youth and mortality, balanced with a rather pedestrian story about the making of a documentary. A middle-aged couple befriends a younger couple and embarks on a documentary project.
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