While We're Young

So I get what the film was aiming for, but I've gotta say, I'm incredibly shocked by its critical reception. I don't think it's "bad", really, but just thoroughly mediocre and really obnoxious. I don't know why, but something about it came off so incredibly forced and fake. It has some good acting and none of it is offensive or anything, but something about it annoyed me in a way I can't really pinpoint. I love Naomi Watts, but she was part of the problem. There just wasn't any synchrony between the performers I don't think. Either that or between their performances and the tone the film was aiming for. I'm perplexed because none of it I can really put my finger on, except that there is absolutely nothing of real note or anything that will be memorable even a day after watching it (well, that's not true, since I saw it a day ago). Not worth it

It feels as if we're back in "Greenburg" territory with "While We're Young" made four years later, since we have the same writer and director (Noah Baumbach) and the same lead actor (Ben Stiller) playing a similar central character. This time, Stiller is Josh, married to Cornelia (Naomi Watts), a middle-aged married couple who find themselves hooking up with Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a couple in their twenties, who remind the older pair of the freshness and spontaneity of youth while he struggles professionally and she laments their inability to become parents.

The female roles are underwritten and, while Driver is good, this is really Stiller's film. The trouble is that he is such an irritating character, unable to complete a long-running project to produce a boring documentary and foolishly trying to recapture his lost youth. There are some funny scenes and situations, but this is an uneven work with a sequence at a hippy retreat proving particularly silly.

I saw the trailers for this, thought it looked funny and i like Stiller so gave it a whirl. What a mistake! This is not the comedy the trailers made it out to be, they show the best bits and when it came to watching the whole film it fell flat. This film was trying to be an intellectual dark comedy, maybe in the vein of Woody Allen but lacked the style, sophistication and plot. The mid life crisis thing, done many times before but better, the role reversal with the oldies doing the social media thing and the younger couple living like hippie bohemians felt like an attempt to be clever but just didn't feel real. The whole moral conscience thing Stiller had was muddled because of the way the plot didn't really make out that anyone had done anything very much wrong. This was deliberate but made the whole morality issue just too subtle for the audience to care. At the end i couldn't care less whether they had a baby together or not and found it all very irritating. I know it was supposed to be allegorical and therefore clever but to me at least it was just badly done and a bit pretentious.

While We're Young is mainly about comparing between two current generations. A typical comedy would normally make it a silly opposition about which one is better, but the movie doesn't make that as a conflict at all. The movie is more concerned on how its main characters acknowledge that they're at the point of a mid-life and finding a way ignore that by interacting a younger crowd. It's simply engaging stuff, almost devoid from the common comedy movie formula until the third act went through some climax that feels different from its more sincere setup, but even with that conventional turn, the film continues to be clever and sticks to its whole theme.

It starts with the childless main couple beginning to realize their age and almost makes a big deal about it until they discover how youth today actually live their lives after befriending with a younger couple and try to exchange each other's medium and lifestyle from the time they grew up with. The most typical way to treat this idea is to aim their new behavior for laughs or go against the other generation, but the movie rather takes it simple by just having them tag along with both of their interests. It may not be too sensational, but it gives a pleasantly charming feel within those interactions. There is still a sense of division between the generations, like how their peers couldn't relate to their new appeal. It kind of jokes about how odd cultures have gone, but the movie doesn't want to be too critical about it either and remains understanding both sides, anyway.

There is also a side story that involves their work as filmmakers of documentary and the movie still explores its main idea by showing how even the ethics of their industry have changed. And this leads to a third act that often exists in generic comedies, but the movie doesn't take those sequences as a punchline. Though, most of that part feels like it's shifting into a whole new topic, but as it turns out, it actually tries to build up a more reasonable contrast between the perspectives of the young and the old. When you think it's going to be in a clichéd direction, it's the writing that keeps things authentic. The acting are thoroughly natural on what they do. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are as likable as always, while Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried bring the charm in their characters.

While We're Young is pretty likable, even when it leads to a weirdly contrived conclusion, but either way, it still works, thanks to its genuinely charming performances and smart writing that has the right intention. The characters are rather fascinated at these hobbies and things that are popular from each other's generations, than making it a serious competition for themselves. But it still concerns at a person's mindsets and change of attitude due to age, which somehow becomes the actual conflict of the story. In the end, it finds a good heart anyway, and it's quite interesting to just see the distinction, but also the similar appeal between these featured generations.

Getting older is an odd business. We know it happens to us, every day, every month, every year. And yet, it also sneaks up on us. Suddenly, we're the oldest people in the room, with the most out-of-date vocabulary, squinting and fussing when once we used to laugh and shrug it all off. Our zest for life is rapidly depleting, and time is running out. Writer-director Noah Baumbach's While We're Young is a wise, witty look at a couple caught in between generations - they're middle- aged, by any and all measures, but are still young enough to hear the siren call of reckless adventure and self-exploration. It's a shame that Baumbach's film winds up making a far less successful segue into the realm of a psychological semi-thriller.

Filmmaker Josh (Ben Stiller) has been in a state of arrested development for years. As his friends settle down with babies and careers, he's been making the same dense, complicated documentary for close to a decade, whilst his happy marriage to Cornelia (Naomi Watts) remains in the same gear as it has for ages. But Josh gains a new lease on life when he meets Jamie (Adam Driver) and his wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a free-spirited pair of twenty-something-year-olds who still sparkle with the possibilities of life, hope and renewal.

While We're Young is at its best when it makes thoughtful, sharp observations about aging. In the first half of the film, Josh rushes to keep up with his new young friends, dragging Cornelia along for the ride. Suddenly, they're shaken out of the rut of their lives, wearing jaunty hats, participating in mass spiritual retreats, and forcing their less flexible bodies into hip-hop classes. Baumbach skilfully juxtaposes this with Josh and Cornelia's increasing disenchantment with their old friends, Marina (Maria Dizzia) and Fletcher (Adam Horovitz), who are caught up in a frenzy of new baby worship. Baumbach's insights are nestled within his scenes and characters - tiny lines or moments will strike home for anyone who's felt out of place for age-related reasons.

What works less well is the moody semi-thriller (possibly titled Not Quite Single White Male) that Baumbach tries to graft onto his comedy about life and aging. It plays very well at first, as Jamie reveals himself to be - just like Josh - a documentarian, and one who - unlike Josh - seems to have everything work out perfectly at every step of the filmmaking process. It's a nice contrast, because it prompts Josh to keep questioning himself about whether he has, after all, squandered away his youth on something that was never meant to be.

However, Jamie's relationship with Josh takes on a more sinister tone as the film progresses. His intentions are called into question, with the shortcuts he takes and the friends he makes bordering on the questionable. It's good character work, to be sure, but ends up confusing rather than deepening the overall narrative. By the time Josh barrels toward an awkward showdown with Jamie, Baumbach seems to have forgotten the point he was making with the film in the first place.

Nonetheless, the film is a worthy vehicle for Stiller and Watts to really dig into their characters and relationship. It's nice to see Stiller really embrace a darker, deeper role that's not quite in his wheelhouse. He pulls it off very well indeed, lending great weight and an unexpected vulnerability to Josh's insecurities. Watts, too, relishes the part of Cornelia, one of the best-written roles in recent memory for a woman in her forties. The film may ultimately belong to Josh, but Watts' Cornelia isn't merely set dressing meant to evoke a life. She's a full-fledged person in her own right, tough and tender, with her own personal heartbreaks that make her the person we see in the film.

You wouldn't think it, given their wildly divergent career paths to date, but Stiller and Watts also share plenty of chemistry. He may be better known for comedy and she for drama, but it's evident here that they can each handle both with plenty of intelligence and polish. It's a delight, therefore, to watch them navigate the tapestry of their relationship, as Josh - fired by jealousy and paranoia - starts worrying at threads of it such that it begins to unravel before Cornelia's eyes. And yet, the fact that these two characters truly love and respect each other through it all is never in doubt.

Although While We're Young may not completely come together as a coherent whole, that doesn't detract from the quiet wonders of this smart, whimsical, bitingly real film. It's a pleasure to spend time with characters this real and rounded, to recognise in them the abandon of youth and the relative stability of age. In his offbeat way, Baumbach is warning us that trade-offs between the two may be less rigid than we have been taught to expect. Like the film itself, it's a welcome insight, one that's filled with both hope and maturity.