While We're Young (2014) - Baumbach offers another observant, clever downer

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The poster for Noah Baumbach's While We're Young seems to promise something light and uplifting ...

 
While We're Young is the new film by great Brooklynite writer-director-producer Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale (2005)).

Josh and Cornelia are beginning to get old, they feel, without having joined the 'baby cult' yet, as they meet a couple in their mid-20s, who spark their imagination and cause them to re-evaluate their lives.

I really liked the first approximately 25 minutes of the film, which are funny and sort of upbeat, in line with the expectations set by the trailer and poster for the film. At the point in the film SPOILER when everyone reveals themselves to be uninhibitedly ridiculous, while throwing up excessively, (yes, that happens), however, my feelings had begun to turn.
Ben Stiller (Tropic Thunder (2008)) and Naomi Watts (The Impossible/Lo Imposible (2012)) are wonderful actors, and they suit each other very well here. The problem is that their at first likable lead characters venture so clueless and naively into the humiliations that await them that at least I lost my affinity for them.
Amanda Seyfried (Lovelace (2013)) and Adam Driver (Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)) are good as the young, hip couple. - Driver I wanted to punch in the face for most of the film, and I never once believed their feigned authenticity, although the comparisons to the older couple along the way hold some amusement.

The details:

The biggest problem about While We're Young may be that it's so dead-on. Baumbach is a great observer of modern people, and he puts his stings in auspiciously and cleverly. He wants to puncture some of our grand ideas and delusions about ourselves and our behavior today, and he does that time and again here. That's just not very uplifting or light-hearted, as I had been led to believe that the film would be. In fact While We're Young is probably Baumbach's most depressing film to date. It resembles Greenberg (2010) a bit, also with Stiller, which is also quite depressing, but which I like better though, maybe because it isn't about a married couple. That seems to make this film's depressing qualities more definite somehow. Also contributing is its theme of the horrors of putting life into the world, which, as you can imagine, isn't exactly invigorating as well. The in my opinion successful, funny version of While We're Young would be Judd Apatow's This Is 40 (2012).
Baumbach has made some not too specific, Woody Allen-like characters. They go through a sometimes contrived plot. (The occurrence of an ice-cream bucket, which leads to a key discovery for Josh, never made much sense to me.) And the ubiquitous Brady Corbet (Force Majeure/Turist (2014)) has a small role, which doesn't seem terribly well-acted, a first for him I think.
While We're Young also has a well-written, but also depressing (especially for the documentary fan), through-line about the making of documentaries today; getting them financed, produced, edited and set out into the world. Charles Grodin (Catch-22 (1970)) is perfectly cast in the role as Watts' championed father in the documentary world.
While We're Young opens with an Ibsen quote, and intelligent Baumbach is smart to point viewers into thinking of his own work in the shade of Ibsen, one of the great social satirists and critics of the written word. The film's problem isn't that it lacks wits, but it was still disappointing to me, maybe because it tonally stretches too far for my taste. I hope Baumbach's new film Mistress America (2015) with his girlfriend Greta Gerwig starring again, (as in their great Frances Ha (2012)) will be another story.

Related reviews:

2012 in films - according to Film Excess (UPDATED I) 
Noah Baumbach: Frances Ha (2012) or, Growing Older Ain't Easy

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 10 mil. $
Box office: 10.8 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[The film has been generally well-reviewed, as just about all of Baumbach's films are, - his parents are film critics, (so give that to a shrink.) - But it has earned just 7.1 mil. $ in North America (70 % of the total gross). It opens in key markets Germany, France and Spain soon, and it'll have to do well there to earn back its costs.]

What do you think of While We're Young?

Mean Girls (2004) - Lohan, Waters and Fey's high school satire triumph

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Lindsay Lohan and, behind her, 'the Plastics' (Amanda Seyfried, Rachel McAdams and Lacey Chabert) for Mark Waters' Mean Girls

Cady has been home-schooled in Africa until her 16th year, in which she will start in a regular American high school. There she soon falls into a difficult dilemma: Should she avoid the popular, shallow girls, try to expose and bring them down, or join them?

Mean Girls became a teen sensation 10 years ago, - mostly for teen girls, understandably, - and it's a smart high school satire comedy/chick flick with a romance subplot. Based on a non-fiction self-help-book book by Rosalind Wiseman (Queen Bees and Wannabes (2002)), the script is written by Tina Fey (This Is Where I Leave You (2014), actress), who also plays a funny supporting role as Cady's struggling, good-hearted math teacher. It's good writing, basically, with many amusing ideas played out in the well-paced movie. In the end, though, SPOILER things come together somewhat too neatly for Cady, I think, and Mean Girls loses some of its realism and ends as a package a little too clean for my taste. I was also a little disappointed to see Cady's friend Janis, who more or less outs herself as gay towards the end, in which everything else seems to come together, began dating a guy (...), - while the other gay male friend went nowhere. In the end of Mean Girls, you might say that Fey chose to dump the two substantial gay characters of her teen movie into a black hole.
Mean Girls features a young Lindsay Lohan (The Canyons (2013)), who is both very charming and a natural, good center for the film. Rachel McAdams (Morning Glory (2010)) is fun as the insidious 'queen bee', and SNL-regulars Amy Poehler (They Came Together (2014)) and Tim Meadows (The Ladies' Man (2000)) are hilarious as McAdams' racy mom and the principal.

Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Cabert next to an uncomfortable Lindsay Lohan in Mark Waters' Mean Girls

The details:

Many people really love Mean Girls, and it is a fun and entertaining film to watch, while it also has some edifying points about the futility and hurtfulness of bullying. It is high-paced and a little talky, and some may be put off slightly by the bitchy teen girl characters in it and draw a big breath after, happy that their general level of drama isn't a norm in most people's lives.
The film won Lohan a string of Teen Choice and MTV awards and was the preliminary peak of her career, before things started going awry and down-hill with DUI's, rehab visits, legal problems etc. etc. Film Excess is still hoping that she'll emerge on the other side as a strong woman sooner rather than later.
Mean Girls is directed by Mark Waters, who lately put out the overlooked Vampire Academy (2014), (many of us have simply had a little much of teenage vampires, I suppose.) He has also directed such hits as Freaky Friday (2003), - another Lohan-starring hit comedy, - and Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), a delightful family comedy with Jim Carrey.

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 17 mil. $
Box office: 129 mil. $
= Huge hit
[With happening young actors, first class comedic material, a pop star-studded soundtrack and good reviews, no wonder that Mean Girls struck gold. 66 % of its earnings were from North America.]

What do you think of Mean Girls?
What's your favorite high school comedy?