While We're Young
While We're Young concerns a middle aged couple, Josh (a distinguished looking Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts). Josh is a struggling documentarian living in the shadow of his distinguished father in law (Charles Grodin) while Cornelia is coming to terms with her inability to conceive a child. They meet Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a young couple whose attitude to life seems to invigorate them.
It's Driver who steals this movie. Coming on screen wearing what can only be described a "douchbag hat", it's a pitch perfect performance that encapsulates the entitlement and unflappable self-confidence of a particular type of young person. I found that the film worked best when demonstrating how cast adrift Josh and Cornelia are, both from the unspoken pressures to raise a family from their other middle aged friends and from their own youth that they're struggling to reclaim. The comedic highlight comes when Cornelia is invited to a mother and baby music class, unaware of precisely what she's let herself in for.
Josh's failure to complete a project that he's been working on for eight years becomes the driving force behind the final act, where the movie begins to lose its way. Stiller is perfectly fine, although it's not a performance that deviates massively from anything I've seen him in before. The onus belatedly switches to the authenticity of the documentarian's art but this theme feels underdeveloped.
This is directed by Noah Baumbach, whose previous film Frances Ha I touched upon earlier on in the year. One of my main issues with that film was its focus on the not altogether interesting lives of affluent young New Yorkers. He takes a similar theme but does something rather more interesting with it here, providing an opposing viewpoint. While We're Young is flawed but definitely worth 90 minutes of your time.
It's Driver who steals this movie. Coming on screen wearing what can only be described a "douchbag hat", it's a pitch perfect performance that encapsulates the entitlement and unflappable self-confidence of a particular type of young person. I found that the film worked best when demonstrating how cast adrift Josh and Cornelia are, both from the unspoken pressures to raise a family from their other middle aged friends and from their own youth that they're struggling to reclaim. The comedic highlight comes when Cornelia is invited to a mother and baby music class, unaware of precisely what she's let herself in for.
Josh's failure to complete a project that he's been working on for eight years becomes the driving force behind the final act, where the movie begins to lose its way. Stiller is perfectly fine, although it's not a performance that deviates massively from anything I've seen him in before. The onus belatedly switches to the authenticity of the documentarian's art but this theme feels underdeveloped.
This is directed by Noah Baumbach, whose previous film Frances Ha I touched upon earlier on in the year. One of my main issues with that film was its focus on the not altogether interesting lives of affluent young New Yorkers. He takes a similar theme but does something rather more interesting with it here, providing an opposing viewpoint. While We're Young is flawed but definitely worth 90 minutes of your time.
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