Review: While We're Young
"You want it now that it's impossible," Cornelia (Naomi Watts) yells at her husband Josh (Ben Stiller) as they argue in the middle of a New York City sidewalk. "It" could be any number of things: success, children, a return to his youth. Youth, yes, but more specifically, that time in his life when everything seemed infinitely possible.
Noah Baumbach's new film, While We're Young, is a screwball comedy that derives much of its bite and zing from very serious matters. Amongst them: growing old, intergenerational tension in which one generation is both bewitched and bewildered by the generation that will outlive them, the struggle for professional and personal satisfaction, and the constant societal expectations that exist in any age. The film contains a surplus of one-liners that are acute and which never fail to hit their target. "I love my baby, but I'm still the most important person in my life," declares a new father whilst a twentysomething on the move says, "If I stay here any longer, I'll girl interrupt."
Cornelia and Josh would seem a couple who have it all. Cornelia is the daughter of a famed documentarian (Charles Grodin) as well as the wife of one who is struggling to finish his years-in-the-making, six-hour-plus take on war, history, and the global economy. They are pressured by their friends Marina (Maria Dizzia) and Fletcher (Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys) to have a baby. The tone is encouraging but also judgmental: be one of us, belong to the cult of parenthood. Josh and Cornelia will not be swayed - she doesn't want to go through all the drugs and shots and miscarriages again and not have it work out; Josh is happy with their life as it is - but one can sense an insecurity lurking beneath Josh's words, "We have the freedom. What we do with it isn't important."
It does become important when the couple meet Jamie (Adam Driver), an aspiring filmmaker who gushes over Josh's work, and his wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried), an idealistic ice cream maker. The older couple are amazed at their younger counterparts' engagement with life, their excitement for one another, their respectfulness for Josh and Cornelia. Baumbach contrasts Josh and Cornelia's lifestyle - listening to music on their iPhones, reading books on Kindle, watching movies on Netflix - with Jamie and Darby's. "It's like their apartment is full of everything we once threw out, but it looks good the way they have it," Cornelia remarks of the young couple's VHS tapes, vinyl records, board games, and electronic typewriter. Soon the fortysomething couple are joining the twentysomething pair as they walk the subway tracks, attend a street beach, and experience an Ayahuasca ceremony.
Their brush with youth re-energises the couple - they're pawing at each other like high school kids - but it also exposes Josh's worst fears. Eager to be Jamie's mentor, he's horrified when the younger man's project gains traction whilst his own work seems doomed to languish in editing limbo. Stiller and Driver share a crackling chemistry. Driver's Jamie appears humble and deferential, but it's Stiller's Josh who is eager to impress and be validated. Baumbach gave Stiller one of his best roles in 2010's Greenberg and While We're Young proves that Stiller thrives under his direction. He is both responsive and measured, able to be ridiculously paranoid and touchingly human. "This movie isn't worth the RAM it's stored on," he sputters with vein-popping rage. Minutes later, he pays tribute to Cornelia with the simple but piercing, "I have something great every day."
Everyone really sings in While We're Young - it's almost impossible not to given Baumbach's talent for characters that are genuine flesh and blood people rather than by-the-numbers types. That said, Seyfried's Darby is not quite defined and, though Watts is a wonder (her go-for-it hip-hop dancing is an absolute joy), both actresses take a back seat to Stiller and Driver, the latter of whom has yet to not charm and impress. Baumbach makes a convincing case for those bristling against middle age, crafting an entertaining and perceptive look at how we should try to embrace life as it is now.
While We're Young
Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Written by: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Grodin, Adam Horovitz, Maria Dizzia, Brady Corbet, Dree Hemingway, Matthew Maher, Peter Yarrow
