Everybody Wants Some!! Review

7.5 out of 10

Cast:

Blake Jenner as Jake

Zoey Deutch as Beverly

Ryan Guzman as Roeper

Tyler Hoechlin as McReynolds

Glen Powell as Finnegan

Wyatt Russell as Willoughby

Will Brittain as Billy Autrey/Beulla Perkins

Forrest Vickery as Coma

Temple Baker as Plummer

Tanner Kalina as Brumley

Austin Amelio as Nesbit

Juston Street as Niles

J. Quinton Johnson as Dale

Directed by Richard Linklater

Everybody Wants Some!! Review:

The output of a real auteur is always recognizable, because the individual point of view which makes their films theirs also brings recognizable themes and motifs with it. Coppala’s fascination with how outsiders are manipulated to do the will of larger institutions, Hitchcock’s continued exploration of the unstoppable growth of evil regardless of the strictures of ordered society, or Richard Linklater’s use of exploration of the existential dilemma of growing to adulthood and the reality that it is a process which never ends. It is that last bit which has become very much the heart of not just Linklater’s storytelling focus, but also the types of stories he has chosen to tell, particularly his penchant for returning to not just previous themes but previous characters over and over again, checking in on them as time passes.

Billed as a spiritual successor to his seminal 90s comedy Dazed and Confused, Linklater’s latest – Everybody Wants Some!! – could just as easily be seen as picking up on Mason Evans just as Boyhood ended or going back in time to look in on Jesse Wallace before he embarked on his career as a novelist. It’s a recognition that, while the names and some of the characteristics are fluid, the trials of understanding what it means to be a sapient individual responsible for his/her own existence is at the core of Linklater’s work, even a comedy about partying baseball players. Specifically the members of Southeastern Texas University’s championship team as seen through the eyes of incoming freshman Jake (Jenner) as he learns what it means to suddenly be a small fish in a big pond.

Following the three days from Jake’s arrival on campus from home to the actual start of class, he finds himself taking the last quick dive from being an adolescent living with his parents to a burgeoning adult responsible for his own life. Well, his own life and the house the baseball players have been gifted with by the college and which they quickly use, as many young college students do, to create a haven for drinking, drugs and womanizing. It’s an idea which is not particularly new within the admittedly narrow sub-genre of college comedies, nor are many of the hijinks the players get up to (many of them based on Linklater’s own experiences). But then they’re not really the point (or at least not the only one); they’re the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine of self-examination – mostly provided by the team’s elder statesman Finnegan (cast standout Powell) – go down. For as many scenes as there are of the team ridiculing teammate Billy Autry (Brittain) for being the most bumpkiny of country bumpkins, there are extended moments of the teammates wandering around campus trying to think of some way to amuse themselves and wondering how everyone else gets through their day. It is vintage Linklater, ignoring typical rudiments of plot to focus entirely on character and hide heaping amounts of Sartre, creating a steady through line to his past work.

Which it needs to survive, because, like the newest members of the baseball team still finding their sea legs, it’s not quite strong enough to survive on its own. While more graphic and over-the-top comedies certainly existed before Linklater, juvenile-minded comedy has gotten through a quantum leap in the last decade with the Judd Apatows and Seth Rogens of the world pushing boundaries as far as they could and redefining what audiences can and do expect from their humor. And while the aims of Linklater may be different (he wants to make you laugh but not as an end in and of itself), the fact is he’s on another team’s turf and the game has evolved since the last time he stepped on the mound. The borderline between vintage and old is skinny and very much in the eye of the beholder, and Everybody Wants Some!! straddles it clumsily. The difference comes, of course, in his more character-oriented focus, but its very familiarity in themes can at times make him see caught in a feedback loop, repeating the same ideas and over and over without ever evolving them.

Some of that is very much the point. For all the enjoyment of youth (and to a certain degree its ignorance) Jake and his compatriots represent, they can’t escape the disturbing feeling that their actions are potentially part of a larger mosaic which will eventually make up their lives, a series of happenings which go on and on and on forever … until they stop. It’s a realization which would be terrifying if they weren’t drunk or stoned much of the time. At some point in the life cycle of both individual and artist, the fact of origination must be surpassed and actual development must take place. How that happens is often our true life work, whether the focus be a body of films or just the choices and actions which make up our own lives.

Everybody Wants Some!! is an interesting and charming stop in one of independent cinema’s most compelling voices. While it may not be remembered as one of his best works – it has too many competing drives and is a little behind the times rather than a vintage reminder of them – it is as necessary as one of his recognized masterpieces and well worth your time.