While We're Young (2014)
April 5, 2015 4:12 PM - Subscribe
A middle-aged couple's career and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple enters their lives.
Yeah, I really wanted to love this one and thought the acting was pretty good throughout, plus a lot of it was filmed in my neighborhood which is cool. But they just didn't manage to stick the ending.
Stiller's big speech about documentary truthfulness is all undercut by how much we've been shown that his character is sort of aimlessly avoiding finishing his documentary throughout the movie - he never seemed like a guy who was toiling to make great art because of his unyielding ideological purism, just like a guy who's kind of a slacker who brings up an ideological excuse when he gets called on it.
I went into this expecting a lot more satire about olds vs youngs, too, and it didn't deliver as much as I wanted. I suppose it's to Baumbach's credit that he is more interested in the characters than in broad satire, but I did think when the movie focused on that stuff it was funnier, like with Stiller wearing the hat.
posted by whir at 7:37 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
Stiller's big speech about documentary truthfulness is all undercut by how much we've been shown that his character is sort of aimlessly avoiding finishing his documentary throughout the movie - he never seemed like a guy who was toiling to make great art because of his unyielding ideological purism, just like a guy who's kind of a slacker who brings up an ideological excuse when he gets called on it.
I went into this expecting a lot more satire about olds vs youngs, too, and it didn't deliver as much as I wanted. I suppose it's to Baumbach's credit that he is more interested in the characters than in broad satire, but I did think when the movie focused on that stuff it was funnier, like with Stiller wearing the hat.
posted by whir at 7:37 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
I also really enjoyed the writing at the beginning, but to me I thought Baumback essentially wrote himself into a corner he couldn't write his way out of. There was a lot there, and over all I enjoyed the movie in terms of it bringing up a lot of interesting points for me to think about. I was a little thrown by how quickly Darby as a character was disposed of and that segue seemed really off. Also the whole bit about the kiss felt really forced and weird.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:00 PM on April 9, 2015
posted by miss-lapin at 7:00 PM on April 9, 2015
It definitely fell apart somewhere along the way. The whole conspiracy of Jamie inserting himself into Josh's life smacked of being lifted from a cheesy horror movie.
The end in particular really rubbed my wife and I the wrong way. The film had some moments early on which captured some of the aspects of being a childless couple, like people constantly telling you how good parents you'd be, slowly being cut out of the lives of your friends with children, and that nagging feeling that you're obligated to justify your lifestyle to both others and yourselves("We could go to Paris anytime!"). But we agreed that it needed a lot more scenes of Cornelia being hassled about not having children to be truly realistic. I thought the film was going to arrive at some point of closure for Josh as he seemed to be the one in the relationship who really (sometimes, after taking hallucinogens) wanted children, while Cornelia seemed at peace with her life. But their choice to adopt, while noble, struck me as them trying to conform to what was expected of them.
So I guess we felt let down that a movie that began as an exploration of aging and finding your place in life without children turned into a lesson on how hipsters are narcissistic sociopaths and there is no escape from the Cult of the Baby.
posted by Dr-Baa at 6:10 AM on May 5, 2015
The end in particular really rubbed my wife and I the wrong way. The film had some moments early on which captured some of the aspects of being a childless couple, like people constantly telling you how good parents you'd be, slowly being cut out of the lives of your friends with children, and that nagging feeling that you're obligated to justify your lifestyle to both others and yourselves("We could go to Paris anytime!"). But we agreed that it needed a lot more scenes of Cornelia being hassled about not having children to be truly realistic. I thought the film was going to arrive at some point of closure for Josh as he seemed to be the one in the relationship who really (sometimes, after taking hallucinogens) wanted children, while Cornelia seemed at peace with her life. But their choice to adopt, while noble, struck me as them trying to conform to what was expected of them.
So I guess we felt let down that a movie that began as an exploration of aging and finding your place in life without children turned into a lesson on how hipsters are narcissistic sociopaths and there is no escape from the Cult of the Baby.
posted by Dr-Baa at 6:10 AM on May 5, 2015
So interesting... I just watched and I thought the first hour was amusing but stilted, and (except the final scene about international adoption - quadruple eye roll) I loved the last 40 minutes!
There was something theatrical about it and the dialog was stiff but I felt ok about that... it felt intentional. Kind of goes with the theme of what is authentic. My favorite performances were Amanda Seyfried's and Adam Horowitz though... they both felt the most natural. And Peter Yarrow was perfect.
Like some other Noah Baumbach movies, it was almost, but not quite, feminist.
I don't know... it was amusing, it had some questions to explore, which weren't really about youth but were a little about middle age and mostly about authenticity. I liked it.
posted by latkes at 9:49 PM on August 7, 2020
There was something theatrical about it and the dialog was stiff but I felt ok about that... it felt intentional. Kind of goes with the theme of what is authentic. My favorite performances were Amanda Seyfried's and Adam Horowitz though... they both felt the most natural. And Peter Yarrow was perfect.
Like some other Noah Baumbach movies, it was almost, but not quite, feminist.
I don't know... it was amusing, it had some questions to explore, which weren't really about youth but were a little about middle age and mostly about authenticity. I liked it.
posted by latkes at 9:49 PM on August 7, 2020
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posted by lunasol at 4:22 PM on April 5, 2015