Kicking and Screaming

"Kicking and Screaming" really depressed me. I'm not sure what I was expecting, having seen only "The Life Aquatic" as an example of notable writer-director Noah Baumbach's work (and of course that film was written with Wes Anderson, and directed by Anderson, so I wasn't sure how much of it was Baumbach's), but nothing I read specifically about "Kicking and Screaming" lead me to expect what I got: one of the most devastating films ever made, and one which while not on par with stuff like "The Graduate" formally, remains one of the very best 'where-is-my-life-going-after-college' movies ever made. It also boasts perhaps the smartest use of flashbacks in a recent American film.

I was thinking this would be sort of like a Wes Anderson film but it's really more what Kevin Smith would have written circa 1994-1997 if his parents were critical thinkers instead of lower-middle-class Catholics, and if he'd been writing about students and recent college grads instead of deadbeats lounging about convenience stores and malls and comics writers involved in bizarre love triangles. Perhaps that's selling this short because as much as I am drawn to some of Smith's work he could never come close to capturing the sort of melancholy Baumbach absolutely nails with this film.

The film isn't really brilliant, mostly because it is really plot-less (which wouldn't be a problem usually but read on) and especially since outside of Eric Stoltz's philosophizing bartender I found nothing particularly interesting about any of the supporting cast. The main emotional pull for me was with Grover (Josh Hamilton) and Jane (Olivia d'Abo)'s story. Jane is pretty much the ideal realization of all the odd, quirky, lovely, bizarre, pretentious, disaffected, writers I had crushes on in university and even before and after that time, and the few I was fortunate enough to date. Ideal really because she's a deeply flawed character. Outside of this core story "Kicking and Screaming" relies primarily on Baumbach's witty banter. The trouble is that I found few of the characters to be all that interesting outside of Grover, Jane, and Chet.

Baumbach's direction initially seems primitive but every so often he surprises with a genuinely sophisticated shot. I assume he got better as he went on and that stuff like "The Squid and the Whale" is entirely sophisticated but he already showed a lot of promise with this film. While again I didn't find the film perfect, I connected so much with Grover and with the place in their lives that all these people are that I found the film genuinely devastating at time. When focusing on Jane and Grover it is absolutely phenomenal, and the final scene, I admit, almost made me cry.

Sophsitication, wit, and charm abound in Noah Baumbach's directorial debut, Kicking and Screaming. It's a movie about life. It's a movie about love. It's a movie about growing up. It's not about growing up in the childhood sense, but growing up as in maturing into true adulthood, post schooling. Kicking and Screaming is an ensemble film about a group of friends who have just graduated college and are now forced to take the next steps in their lives as they emerge into the real world. Some of them cope better than others, but they all struggle to find meaning in a post scholastic existence where they aren't quite sure what will become of them. The film is a sort of stream of consciousness, almost rambling foray into adult life in which we must make something of ourselves. It is a smart film, it is a sophisticated film, but it's almost too smart for its own good.

We learn a few key things from Kicking and Screaming. One. Noah Baumbach is a smart guy who knows how to write and has a keen sense of reality and what makes us human. Two. He may be too smart to make a coherent and entertaining story about human interaction and psychology. And three. Having so many things on one's plate is overwhelming and it causes a film to lose all sense of purpose. Baumbach tackles a lot of subjects with Kicking and Screaming, but they sort of all run into each other and get tangled up with one another that this film loses its direction starts to feel less and less like a film and more like an astute psychological study that lacks any real emotion.

I feel like the characters in Kicking and Screaming aren't as much human as they are simply vehicles for Baumbach to exemplify offbeat quirks and complex relationships. He's created very diverse and very smart characters, but they don't connect on the emotional level that is necessary for this film to work. Baumbach obviously knows what he is doing with this film but he barely misses the mark, only by throwing in too many quirks and too many off kilter personality traits that turn these characters into test subjects instead of humans. That being said, I enjoyed this film for its intelligence and integrity, but the flaws are there and they hold back the film from being really great. Kicking and Screaming would make a great psychological research paper that detailed hypothetical situations and closely examined the human interaction in these situations but, as a film, it lacks the extra step that makes the art of cinema something more than a research paper can accomplish.

You can't diss anybody in this film for what they accomplish. I have lots of respect for the keen awareness Noah Baumbach displays about life in this film. It is certainly a good film and it is smarter than the average dribble we see today, but it's far from perfect. It isn't something I would watch again, but I don't regret checking it out for its fascinating sophisticated qualities.

"Kicking and Screaming" shows a considerable degree of self-awareness for a film about college graduation directed by a 25-year-old, but it is still an awkward, self-conscious film that is no more confident than its insecure characters.

It was fortunate that in 1995, there were producers out there who believed a movie about depressed upper-middle class white boys had commercial potential, because those producers launched the career of Noah Baumbach, who would go on to make superior films in the next decade. As in his later films, Baumbach seems to take pity on pretentious and tremendously insecure characters while simultaneously taking delight in exposing their weaknesses to the world. But in "Kicking and Screaming," unlike, say, "The Squid and the Whale," Baumbach seems to identify just a little too closely with his young characters and seems to believe that they are less obnoxious than they are.

"Kicking and Screaming"'s greatest strength and weakness is how well it captures an aspect of growing up not often captured on film: the resistance to change. Many films deal with characters who gradually change as they come of age, but "Kicking and Screaming" deals with characters who desire on some level to move on past their current selves but are hesitant to do anything about that desire. This also hurts the film, however, since very little changes from beginning to end, and when characters do change at all, they change less than they (or the film) believe.

The stagnation would not be a problem if the film were a comedy, but, while the film is full of quirky characters and occasionally funny jokes, it deals with the dullness and depression too honestly to really work as a comedy. When wealthy Max, perhaps the most stagnant of all the characters, puts a "broken glass" sign over a pile of shattered glass rather than cleaning it up, it is good for a laugh, but as the film goes on, we get to know Max well enough that it almost stops being funny.

"Kicking and Screaming" is certainly worth seeing for any fans of college-related movies and should probably be required viewing for anyone in their junior or senior years, since it could work as an effective warning against the perils that await graduates without plans. But the film, like its characters, has both too much self-consciousness and too little self-awareness to achieve the levels of comedic or dramatic potential that it hints at.

KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995) **** Josh Hamilton, Olivia d' Abo, Chris Eigeman, Parker Posey, Eric Stoltz, Jason Wiles, Carlos Jacott, Cara Buono. To label this the perfect Generation X film so far would do an injustice to this exceptionally brilliant and dead accurate depiction of twentysomethings embarking upon The Real World and grasping futilely to remain in their comfortable existence at college. More like an update of "Diner" with five college pals griping, searching and dealing with their recent shift of reality with some truly biting dialogue and wholly believeable sequences. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach (who has a cameo in the "cow f***er" exchange). Perfect.

When I came across this film, I initially had no idea it was directed by Noah Baumbach. At first is rather difficult to immerse yourself in what is going on inside the screen, because there is no context whatsoever, only dialogue coming from obnoxious pseudo-intellectual grad students. It is definitely a low start, but Baumbach takes the steer and lets his characters breathe a little, with interaction in small doses among only a few other characters. Their relationships start growing and we finally get a sense of their context, not just time and place but also how everyone relates to one another and how do they feel specifically about youth, growing up, responsibilities and the future. It is only at the middle where things actually get interesting; the handling of dialogue is not great by any sort, but moderate, although not that interesting to begin with.

The characters overall are not very likeable, they all have their issues but it's hard to sympathize with any of them, because they are selfish and self-centered among other disruptive qualities. So, two of this films most important elements such as the writing and the characters try to sustain the film that ultimately fails to deliver a satisfying product.

Nevertheless, it's an acceptable effort from Noah Baumbach, but he has many better outlets than this.