Sunday, May 10, 2015

While We're Young

Lately I’ve been coming to the sad realization that I am no longer considered a young man by most people’s standards. I’m not quite old or middle aged yet but my times of jumping into random mosh pits at concerts may be over since I am 100% certain that I absolutely destroyed my knee this past SXSW during a Cloud Nothings show. Oh well, at least I’m not to the point of piercing my ears or experimenting with a gay phase or anything like that because these things really do happen people, I saw the last Ewan McGregor film (The Beginners).

Anyway, Noah Baumbach’s latest uncomfortable comedy features a middle aged couple who’s stuck in a rut. They lead fairly normal and boring lives where they lie to one another about still being spontaneous and having the ability to do whatever they want whenever they want even though it’s been 8 years since their last trip. And while they’ve decided not to have children themselves, all of their friends are starting to do so and this is causing a disconnect between them and anyone who’s in their age group because they now have different interests in life.

So as opposed to having dinner parties or taking trips to other countries, their friends now attend music labs where everyone sings to one another using the voices and the vocabularies of two year olds. Or they are simply just obsessing over themselves and the advancement of their children in the world, which is something that would understandably make anyone want to punch them in the face after a while.

Well one day, Josh (Ben Stiller) meets Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) at one of his lectures. Jamie admits to him that he is a huge fan of his documentaries and that he would love nothing more than to pick his brain for a while; and as the two hang out with one another, they along with their wives, become close friends.

Josh and his wife Corneilia (Naomi Watts) find themselves going to hipster “street beach” parties in Bushwick and to weekend trips to a shaman’s home to take drugs so that they can find their inner selves. They are also over time exposed to how truly different their lives are compared to Jamie and Darby’s lives as they are fully immersed in the hipster world, a world where kids actually read books, listen to records, and watch VHS tapes versus that of playing on their IPads or listening to mp3’s.
  
After a while though, Josh begins to question Jamie’s motives as his silly idea for a documentary takes off in ways that no one could have ever imagined; and as he becomes successful and things start to line up for him, it exposes Josh and his recent failures in a way that begins to bring the ugliness out of him.

Did I mention this was a comedy? Baumbach has a way a tackling serious issues that take place in normal people’s lives but does so in a funny manner; similar to Wes Anderson. The difference is that Baumbach presents it in a way that makes laugh to keep from crying.

This movie hit home with me as I live in the heart of hipster city where my best friend’s ex-girlfriend (who’s awesome btw) has a room dedicated to VHS tapes and wears nothing but high waisted skinny jeans; while I find myself discovering more and more grey hairs every day and am still holding on to the hope that my Nirvana cover band My Chemical Toilet will hit it big one day so that we can open up for Weird Al Yankovich. We all have to dream, don’t we?

Overall this movie was rather enjoyable and I suggest that you pop in after seeing Ex Machina and the Avengers. I give it a rating of FRESH!  

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