While We’re Young concerns documentarian Josh (Ben Stiller) and his producer wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts). They are in their early forties and childless, and at the start of the movie, they seem to be in somewhat of a rut. Josh has been working on the same project for a decade, and the two find themselves unable to relate to their now-parent friends. And then twentysomethings Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amada Seyfried) show up in a class that Josh is teaching one night. Josh is smitten with the younger couple and their approach to life, and he’s soon hanging out with them all the time.
And so Josh gets a bike, starts wearing a trilby, and does all sorts of things one no longer expects from somebody in his or her forties. At one point, he and Cornelia join the younger couple at an ayahuasca party. He offers to help Jamie out with a documentary he’s shooting, and then later learns that Jamie might not be everything he thinks he is. Writing out the premise for the film makes it sound like the stuff of sitcoms, mining easy comedy from older people not acting their age, and perhaps poking fun at young people and their crazy attitudes. And there is some of that in this movie, definitely. But While We’re Young is smarter and funnier than that, the movie taking its laughs from sharp observations.
It is probably no accident that the film casts Ben Stiller in the lead role. Stiller was the director of Reality Bites, which remains an easy cinematic touchstone for Generation X. He stands in as the representative of the said generation, which the movie depicts as people in arrested development, looking for authenticity within the boring prosperity of their adult lives. And so they look to the next generation, who the movie presents as children who wear authenticity as an affectation. A lesser movie would mainly have these two generations clashing. What makes this movie smarter is that it finds its pleasures in the two sides getting along.
There is certainly a lot of fun poked at the differences between the generations. And in the end, writer/director Baumbach, who is in his mid-forties, makes his allegiances clear. But the film isn’t content with making villains out of the young. There’s an appealing level of introspection, an acknowledgement that the two generations have more in common than they’re willing to admit, both in good ways and in bad ways. The film is positively buoyant when it sketches out the two couples getting along. And when the negatives arrive, it is coming from all sides.
The film is probably weakest in its big comedic set pieces. In these scenes, the film feels like it overreaches, dispensing with reality as it goes hard for laughs. It’s much better when it’s just staying in the moment, building its sense of comedy off of the well-observed interactions between the two couples. Excellent performances help in this regard. Ben Stiller is never funnier than when he’s allowed to cling to a growing sense of desperation. Naomi Watts isn’t often tapped for comedies, but she’s always great when she is. Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried don’t get to play fully drawn out characters, but their overall gameness bring the roles life. And the great Charles Grodin brings genuine gravity to a small role with his signature wryness.
While We’re Young kind of falters in the end, building to a set piece that kind of plays as a polemic. Some bitterness shows, and it leaves a foul taste. But it doesn’t negate the pleasures of the film as a whole, which exhibits so much wit within its tightly composed ninety-minute runtime. The subject of generational divide is rarely handled well in media. This movie brings appealing empathy to both sides, and finds a measure of truth and insight somewhere in the mess.
My Rating:
