‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ (2016) ***/*****
The ‘Boyhood’ director refuses to grow up
Richard Linklater has never been all that interested in making movies about story. Traditionally, his movies have been far more interested in establishing a tone (Waking Life), or fully fleshing out a group of characters (the Before trilogy), or even just creating little slices of life (Slacker). Throughout his career he also seems to keep coming back to exploring youth, that period of time in our lives where everything seems new and the world is a place full of unlimited potential but also unlimited potential for confusion. Sometimes his fascination with being young even seems to lead to a fixation on his own youth, leading to movies that are soaked with nostalgia for years gone past (Dazed and Confused). Everybody Wants Some!! has been marketed as being a “spiritual successor” to Dazed and Confused, which means that it’s just about the most nostalgia-soaked, rosy-eyed view of the late 70s/early 80s ever imagined.
The film takes place at a Texas university in the fall of 1980, over the course of the last few weekend days before classes begin on Monday. Our vantage point into this world comes through the eyes of Jake (Blake Jenner), an affable athlete and an incoming freshman who has been recruited to pitch for the school’s purportedly very successful baseball team. We follow him as he integrates into the housing the school sets aside for the players, as he meets the motley crew of meatheads and stoners who make up his new team, as he gets drunk and stoned and listens to his new compatriots philosophize about life, the universe, and everything in it, and, most engagingly, as he seeks out his first taste of college romance. Also, eventually there will be baseball, and theoretically there will be classes, but this movie isn’t focused on learning. It’s much more interested in L-I-V-I-N. Livin’ and buns. Everybody Wants Some!! opens on a series of shots of butts in tiny shorts, and it doesn’t let up on focusing on butts in tiny shorts at any point thereafter. Linklater seems to have entered the “buns and dudes giving high-fives” period of his career.
As I hinted at earlier, Everybody Wants Some!! is a movie that doesn’t tell much of a story. Even compared to a meandering movie like Dazed and Confused, which told a series of small stories that at least all intersected at a climactic party, it’s formless and without structure. Sure, there’s a ticking clock element that’s constantly counting down to the beginning of classes, but seeing as the characters care so little about the beginning of classes, it acts as some kind of Meta joke rather than as a framework for storytelling. There’s no conflict here, so there’s no real feeling of forward momentum, or even any sense of what direction the film is heading in. So much of the movie consists of us just watching these characters have a good time — watching them high five, chug beers, rag on each other, and try to score girls — that it begins to feel like you’re being recounted the events of an endless weekend that exists in some sort of time loop. How much relaxing did these guys pack into just three days?
The reason the film begins to feel lost rather than wandering and overlong rather than unhurried is that it’s just not any fun to spend this much time with 19-year-olds unless you’re another 19-year-old. Kids of this age are smug when they should be humble, self-centered when they should open-minded, and shallow when they should be looking for meaning. This being a Linklater film, of course there are tangents of dialogue that deal with deeper issues like the nature of humanity, the root of our suffering, the fluidity of our identity, etc… but seeing as all of the dialogue is happening between privileged young people who have yet to experience anything substantial, all of the philosophies being spouted are very mundane, very half-baked, and something of a chore to sit through.
Linklater is aware that the dialogue he’s written is half-baked and mundane, of course — it’s appropriate for the characters, and the naïveté on display plays into the deeper thematic concerns that the film explores in its second half, where the main character starts to get a little bit more developed — but that doesn’t change the fact that we still have to sit through a ton of scenes of stoned kids rambling about truth, of college seniors lecturing to the freshmen about how they’ve got it all figured out, of endless bragging about juvenile shit like who can drink the most beer, who can smoke the most weed, and who’s had the most success objectifying women. The problem isn’t helped by the fact that the characters are all so similarly quaffed, so similarly, generically attractive, so similarly male, and so similarly white, either. You get halfway through the film before you can even tell any of the guys apart. Pulled out and consumed individually, I’m sure that a number of these Linklatery moments would be enjoyable little shorts, but put together as a feature-length film they eventually become a bit of a bore. It’s only in the potential relationship that Jake strikes up with an art school student named Beverly (Zoey Deutch) that the film is provided a human center that can be related to by audience members who aren’t at the same age as these characters or approaching it.
It’s in that relationship where the acting of the film gets a chance to shine too. Linklater has put together a young cast of relative unknowns, and as can be expected, several of them seem to have the potential to go on to have notable careers. Jenner is comfortingly sheepish as the lead. He’s likable in the same non-threatening way that Chris Klein was when he first debuted in Election — like a puppy whose hair you want to muss. Hopefully he proves to be a more versatile talent than Klein did in his post-working-with-Alexander-Payne years though. You wouldn’t think so in all of the scenes where he’s left sitting wide-eyed while the veteran members of his new team regale him with the ins-and-outs of being in college and privileged, but in the scenes he shares with Deutsch, where there’s some actual back-and-forth dialogue going on, there’s a glimmer of intelligence in his eyes that seems to promise that his chances are pretty good.
Speaking of Deutch, she’s quite the presence. She rushes over this movie like a welcome splash of cool water on a sweltering summer day. She has a light in her eyes and a pep in her step that makes her jump off the screen, and she probably gives the best performance in the film. There’s a chance that she might have been so engaging here solely because she plays the only female character who’s actually allowed to be a person rather than just a blank-faced sex object who’s squeezed her hot buns into short-shorts though. Would she still stand out so much and fare so well in an environment where she’s surrounded by other female performers who are also being allowed to play three-dimensional characters? I think so, and it will be interesting to find out.
Of the mass of interchangeable white guys who make up the rest of the cast (okay, and J. Quinton Johnson as the one generic black guy), two stood out as having big potential to eventually experience stardom. Glen Powell shows of a natural charisma as the Fonzie-esque guru of the group, Finnegan. He never stops talking, and everything that comes out of his mouth is an obvious line, but he’s magnetic enough to sell his wares without offending anyway. The other actor is Wyatt Russell, who exudes a sort of sleepy charm as the stoner philosopher of the group, Willoughby. Listening to him pontificate while rolling a joint brings to mind the comforting screen presence that Joel Hodgson brought to the table for early episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He grounds the typical stoner archetype and doesn’t allow it to be reduced to caricature, and with the amount of weed comedies aimed at young people that get made every year, one can imagine another director calling upon his services very soon.
It’s obvious by now that Everybody Wants Some!! wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but art is seen differently when it’s looked at through different eyes, so it’s tough to call this a film that shouldn’t be recommended. What would the endless partying and freedom from parental guidance in this film look like to a high school student who’s currently, nervously anticipating their own entry into college? Certainly not as tedious and juvenile as it looks to me. How would all of the tight pants, feathered hair, and combed mustaches in this film look to someone who was college-aged in the early 80s? Likely not as indulgent and fetishized as it looks to me. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing when it’s nostalgia for your particular developing years. My least favorite Richard Linklater is the Richard Linklater who has gotten lost in nostalgia for his days as a student, but many people feel differently. Over time this one might not become the classic that Dazed and Confused is considered as being, but it feels like something that’s definitely going to earn a lot of fans.
