Everybody Wants Some!!
Director: Richard
Linklater
Writer: Richard
Linklater
Starring: Blake
Jenner, Temple Baker, Glen Powell, Tyler Hoechlin, Wyatt Russell,
Zoey Deutch
Rating: Four stars
out of five
In limited release
now
Richard Linklater
has long been one of filmmaking's top documenters of how
relationships begin. It's all over his career, from Before Sunrise
to Boyhood to Dazed and Confused. 23 years after
that last movie, Linklater has released his so-called “spiritual
sequel,” Everybody Wants Some!! This story, about a freshman
college baseball pitcher named Jake (Blake Jenner) moving in the
weekend before school starts in the fall of 1980, shares none of the
characters or setting of the earlier hangout picture classic. But its
period setting, general lack of a plot, and fluttering in and out of
storylines and characters feels of a piece.
Linklater's latest
is an easygoing film, one seemingly destined to become an ear worm
much like its predecessor, full of easily-quoted lines and
characterizations plucked from just about any audience member's
memory of people they have known. It's a picture with a refreshing
lack of malice or villainy. Sure, there are jerks with egos too big
for their abilities and the kind of personality conflicts one would
expect in a group of so many far-flung people meeting each other for
the first time, but the arc, however loose it may be, of Everybody
Wants Some!! is coming from a desire for companionship and
genuine curiosity in those around you.
That's where
Linklater draws the greatest amount of truth in the story. These
characters, almost all of whom live in their Texas university's
baseball houses – essentially a sports fraternity – showcase the
speed friends are made in the early days of college. Out of
homesickness or simply looking to live up to their idealized
understanding of the partying college life, they push and pull each
other in every direction to have a good time. All they have is each
other, so they may as well spend every waking hour together. This
builds friendships quickly, giving everyone a crash course into each
other's insecurities and the razzing made possible by those
insecurities. Games of ping pong become titanic battles and guessing
games between bong hits reveal the cognitive capabilities of each
participant in enlightening and hilarious ways. There are false steps
as these guys feel each other out, sometimes annoying one another,
and sometimes coming to realize that not every relationship is worth
cultivating. Everyone puts their foot in their mouth at least once
throughout the film's runtime, reflecting the weekend-long span of
the story to be something real and not a plot contrivance.
What issues there
are arise in the presentation of these sharp characters. As can
sometimes be Linklater's bugaboo, he and cinematographer Shane F.
Kelly create a flat look to the proceedings much of the time. There
are a number of bars visited by these players – a country hoedown
type of establishment, a disco-loving dance hall, a punk show in a
dive – and none of them ever has the look or feel of a bar. The
lights all appear to be up at full blast, well after last call. This
lighting highlights the film's inability to fully realize its 1980
setting by showing how crisp and almost plasticky the costumes are –
they look like costumes when they would feel lived in if shot
with slightly moodier or more colorful light.
The same goes for
the hair, facial and otherwise. It's almost like Linklater and
company spent too long in the casting process and found themselves
bumped up against the start of shooting without allowing these actors
to grow their hair to properly fit the era. It depends on the
characters, but oftentimes haircuts and mustaches look pasted on,
like a costume party rather than how these guys carry themselves in
their day-to-day lives.
But these are minor
complaints that melt away when the characters announce their
presence, mixing and matching with a real chemistry and 1980 details
that are more related to sociology than specific textures of clothes
or hair. Car rides are soundtracked with whatever is “cool” on
the radio – singalongs to Sugarhill Gang and Devo are some of the
most joyful sequences – showing a fond remembrance for a time when
there was a more communal sense of taste that people shared. CDs and
later iPods and streaming services would allow future young people
the ability to curate a sense of personality in their art, but it
takes away from the “we're in this together” commonality on
display in Everybody Wants Some!! These guys are willing to do
whatever offers them a chance to have fun and they're willing to
forget divisions in culture for a few kicks. That's an admirable,
lovable quality to have in a movie.
It would do a
disservice to this hangout film to avoid mentioning its standout
performances. While Jake is ostensibly the lead and the audience's
eyes into this goofy world of hyper-competitive goofballs, it is as
much an ensemble as anything you'll see. Jenner creates in Jake a
character who is an everyman, yes, but he's not a bland cipher –
he's sweet and quick on his feet, able to get along with pretty much
anyone he meets. The object of his first-weekend-away-at-school
affection, Beverly (Zoey Deutch, who is basically a clone of her mother, Lea
Thompson, in Back to the Future), is a sophomore who has things
just a teensy tiny bit figured out and her affection for her theatre
major (and their dress-up party late in the film) is so endearing
that it's a no-brainer for Jake to take her to get ice cream. The
star-making turn, though, has to belong to Glen Powell as Finnegan,
an upperclassman on the team with interests that go beyond baseball.
Those interests include never shutting up and being insufferably (but
somehow still lovably) smarter than everyone around him to the point
where everyone begins to seek his advice they initially rolled their
eyes at earlier.
Those are just a
few of the dozen or so people with memorable moments in such an
enjoyable, good-natured film. As it ages, its chintzier production
elements will likely fade because of the inspired camaraderie and
true-to-life depiction of college life and how friendships begin.
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