The Best And Worst Of The 2016 Sydney Film Festival, Reviewed
Sorry, the movie about Daniel Radcliffe's farting corpse is a bit of a stinker.
The Film That Will Make You Nostalgic As All Hell
Everybody Wants Some!!, dir. Richard Linklater
Starring: Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Ryan Guzman
Reviewed by: Lauren Caroll Harris
Is there any filmmaker more nostalgic than Richard Linklater? Wes Anderson has cornered the market on overt pastel whimsy, but it’s Linklater who returns time on time to the periods when he came of age. After the innovation of Boyhood, Linklater’s latest contemplates the cusp of manhood.
Set in 1980, the film is a period piece with all the hallmarks of the sprawling indie genre the director has all but defined: a sweetly pliable protagonist (Jake, a baseball player beginning college), a short period of time (the final summer weekend of partying before class starts) and a single objective (getting laid). Jake’s new friends are baseball players too, living in a big crazy sharehouse, and though they all curve to cliche they’re as affectionately drawn and clearly delineated as can be: the would-be womaniser, the Southern dope, the loveable stoner, the freaky nutball. What saves the film from being a full-blown sausage-fest is that Linklater expertly and lovingly skewers the demented social codes of masculinity, with the film’s gags mainly centred around these guys’ emasculation and dudebro group mentality. It’s funny as hell.
Linklater may also be the only indie director who can get a film financed and distributed without the involvement of A-list actors. It’s a great thing. The pop auteur’s films make you realise the attachment of associations you form to celebrity actors. Here, the real star of this spiritual sequel to Linklater’s 1990s slacker films like Dazed and Confused is the design. From the costuming to the sets to the sound, it’s all about halternecks, Joni Mitchell posters and ‘My Sharona‘. The celebrity-free cast frees you to just be immersed in Linklater’s vision of an American college town.
Like the first two stores in the Before trilogy, Everybody is suffused with a deep longing, a fondness of recollection from the era of Linklater’s youth. This is the lovely quality of the film: its sweetness in depicting an era in which the 1970s were dying away the 1980s hadn’t fully kicked into gear. At this stage of his career, Linklater is so assured in his storytelling abilities and his vision. The guy knows what he’s doing. Linklater’s 1980 is a world that’s so perfect in its contours, so detailed in its realisation, and quite delightful to inhabit for two hours.
For fans of: disco infernos, hotpants, Devo.
Opening in Australia: in select cinemas now.
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