While We’re Young: Movie Review
Writer/director Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale”) is back with his latest comedy “While We’re Young”, starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, and the always welcome Charles Grodin. Much like Baumbach’s previous works “Greenberg” and “Frances Ha”, his latest effort is an intelligent comedy. The biggest difference here is that “While We’re Young” may be a little more accessible to a wider audience.
Josh (Stiller) and Cornelia (Watts) are a seemingly happy middle-aged married couple in New York City. Josh teaches a screenwriting college course while working on his documentary for the past ten years. Cornelia works for her father (Grodin) who is a famous documentary filmmaker that Josh used to work for. Josh and Cornelia don’t do much at all aside from dinner dates with their best friends Marina (Maria Dizzia) and Fletcher (Beastie Boys, Adam Horovitz). The biggest problem Josh and Cornelia face is that they don’t have much in common with their friends anymore. Now that Marina and Fletcher are parents, their lives have changed.
In comes Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a twenty-something couple that Josh meets while teaching his course. Jamie is a filmmaker that is thrilled to have Josh as his teacher and Darby loves to make ice-cream at home. The couple befriend Josh and Cornelia and they start to hang out quite often. Bike riding, hip-hop dance class, and even partaking in hallucinogens. The younger couple makes the middle aged couple feel young again. When Josh agrees to help Jamie with his documentary, he soon realizes a few things about Jamie and Darby that don’t quite add up.
“While We’re Young” has quite a few clever moments. In one scene we see the older couple using the latest technical devices like smart phones and tablets, while the young couple watch VHS tapes and play vinyl records. It also has a great soundtrack. Although the cast is great, I just didn’t love the movie. It’s good but there are a handful of scenes that took me out of the story. One scene in particular where everyone was getting high and throwing up in buckets as they try to come to some sort of revelation just didn’t work for me. Despite a few other issues I had, “While We’re Young” is still worth checking out, especially if you like the people involved.
By: Marc Ferman