Everybody Wants Some!!

This was put together in an entertaining fashion. Trouble for me is that I'd walk a mile to avoid the kind of people the film is about. Always did, when I was younger, avoid the bullying sexist jock and unless you are enamoured, you may not want some of a film that celebrates them off the Richter scale.

There is also the fact that in this Mudville there are only shiny happy people out of Hollywood wardrobe department and there's little resemblance to reality.

That shouldn't stop those who want college and youth myths big on All American ball-whacking, drinking, weed-smoking, look-how-crazy-we-all-are high spirits. There will be lots of people who want some of that.

I enjoyed this movie and love all of Linklater's works. Certain directors just mesh well with your world view and style. His humor works for certain people, and it doesn't translate well for international audiences. For instance, I can't stand Kevin Smith's style of comedy, but many people adore it.

This movie took me back to my college years. I attended the University of Texas and belonged to a fraternity. Although we weren't athletic jocks, there were similar dynamics, characters, and situations as with this movie's baseball team. Looking back it was immature and misogynistic fun, however it happened and I had great memories from then. This movie captured that very well.

That said, there was no tension or arc that this group faced. Everything came to them pretty easy, like on a silver platter. There are people like that in life, yet it doesn't make for compelling cinema. I also thought the lead had little chemistry or charisma with his girl. The character played by Glen Powell was the highlight, as was the soundtrack.

"Don't be afraid to let the experience find you." Willoughby (Wyatt Russell)

Everybody Wants Some!! is a real comedy, not some reality show knock off about college athletes gone bad. It's 1980, it feels like 1980, and the kids are full of 1980's optimism expressed in their passion for baseball and hot chicks. The "experience" the very high, hippie philosopher Willoughby promotes in the quote above comes for most at college, where new experiences find and transform.

The hero is Jake (Blake Jenner), a freshman pitcher joining the rest of the college baseball team in one of their two houses provided off campus, conveniently unsupervised. He represents the youthful idealism of a former high-school star athlete on scholarship at a small south Texas college. Linklater's plot is so charmingly rambling, like his favorite pinball motif, that character development is acceptably absent. With the pastiche of pranks that serve as episodes, seriousness can't prevail anymore than it did in Linklater's classic, Dazed and Confused.

The most interesting character has to be Finn (Glen Powell), the ladies' man spouting Linklater aphorisms like the one above. He's a woman-con who nevertheless comes out with thoughts for life amidst his clowning.

What makes this film different is that from the beginning these wisecracking jocks know they're not going to be picked up by the pros, but they still talk about that happening with the right realistic attitude. Director Richard Linklater, coming off his Oscar-nominated Boyhood, in which he showed unique insight into a growing boy, now paints a portrait of young men quickly transitioning into men who know what's up.

During this coming of age story, the players play at college life with the same gusto they show for their sport, not always scoring but always in pursuit, as if both games were evidence of their right to success, an American characteristic to be sure. Seeing a possible scout painting a house near the playing field, the realization is that he may not be a scout. All everybody can infer is it's good to be ready when any of life's "scouts" should come by.

The wit is omnipresent and occasionally brilliant, evidenced by these two insults: dipshitification and fuckwithery—used more than once to put someone down and toughen up at the same time.

Amidst Twilight Zone VHS's, Van Halen, and Carl Sagan, Linklater has returned us to 1980). And dare I say it, gives a good name to nostalgia.

I had great hopes for this, ,knowing Linklater's work. I had great expectations also because I anticipated seeing "my" college era and experience through his lens and view. It did not resonate but I was never a part of a Fraternity or clique. What did sink in and where the movie turned for me was the realization that this was a film about discovery and how this group of misfits are finding their own identity. Once I got over the "Jock Talk" and realized that fact, I started to really like this movie. It was an interesting choice to select a group of Baseball players to serve as the vehicle to discovery and identity. It turned out this film did, in fact, resonate with me as I was a loner in college who had many friends who "belonged" to various groups, never once considering myself a part of any particular group. That diversity was one of the best value propositions I got out of my college experience. The quest for diversity was very well presented in this movie picture show.

Yes, the movie was realistic and there were a few, sparse moments of tenderness between Jake and his romantic interest, but I was disappointed by the imbalanced focus of this movie. As most college students, then and now, are not hardcore jocks, this is a skewed vision of college life in that era. We get scant input from other groups on campus.

Compared to Dazed and Confused, which featured a much broader spectrum of teenage life in the mid 70s, including jocks, budding intellectuals, burn-outs, etc., Everybody Wants Some is mainly focused on college jock life and the pervasive misogyny one might expect. At times insightful, and also humorous, the movie simply observes the lives of its characters. But it pales compared to its predecessor, and the overwhelming emphasis on the misogynistic and competitive sexual exploits of its characters tends to fracture and efface the movie's charms.