Everybody Wants Some!! — Review

I’ve always been a sucker for the coming-of-age genre, and even if that weird day comes to pass where I actually feel completely grown-up (does it ever?), then I suppose it’ll be a nostalgia thing, so they’ll still get me. Since a lot of Richard Linklater’s movies are about young people discovering life as well as lost adults still finding their way, I think it’s fair to assume he feels much the same way on this subject as I do.

‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ (yes, the double exclamation point is part of the title) is a charming hang-out movie about college baseball players in Texas in 1980. Perhaps you know Linklater himself is from Texas, and he also played baseball in high school, though he eventually turned toward film instead. He’s said that at one point he was writing ‘Boyhood’ to be about an athlete, but ended up centering on an artsy kid instead. So in a way you can look at ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ as a continuation of the alternate version of ‘Boyhood,’ though more in the carefree vein of Linklater’s excellent ‘Dazed and Confused.’ Like ‘Dazed,’ as well as Linklater’s ‘Before’ trilogy, (and opposite to ‘Boyhood’) ‘Everybody,’ takes place over a very short period of time — specifically the party-filled weekend before class starts.

Much as Martin Scorsese clearly understands how groups of guys operate, Linklater has always demonstrated a firm grasp on the male pack as well. Just, you know, for him, it’s mostly in a more light-hearted, less murder-y kind of setting. Starring a likable cast (most of whom, in typical movie fashion, are clearly too old to be undergraduates) of young actors, ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ doesn’t exactly break new cinematic ground (Did I mention the guy just made ‘Boyhood? Give him a few years, alright?). It does, though, give us sweet pop soundtrack, a fun crowd to hang out with for two hours and even some insightful moments of male bonding. So go… get some? Jesus, I know I can do better than that.

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