While We're Young

Noah Baumbach's While We're Young starts out as a delightful and hilarious observation on the aging Generation X culture.  But then, little by little, the film becomes driven solely by the plot, and while it remains enjoyable, I really just wanted the movie to go back to having the characters just talking again.  This is a somewhat uneven, but ultimately rewarding comedy, that should hit home with different age groups who might watch it.

The main characters at the center of the film are Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts).  They're a married couple living a comfortable and ordinary life in Manhattan.  Josh is a documentary filmmaker who has been struggling to finish his recent film for the past 10 years.  As for Cornelia, I don't seem to remember her having a job, or mentioning one.  They're in their forties, and their closest friends (a couple portrayed by Maria Dizzia and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys) have just had their first baby.  Josh and Cornelia have tried to have a baby of their own in the past, but it hasn't worked.  Now they feel left out, as all their friends can talk about is their new daughter.  As Josh and Cornelia begin to feel stranded by the fact that they will never have children, they meet a much younger couple in their early 20s that Josh becomes completely infatuated with, as does Cornelia eventually.

Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) are young, energetic, and unquestionably hip.  While the rest of the world is plugged in with the latest technology, Jamie and Darby listen to vinyl, watch VHS tapes, write on old fashioned typewriters, and even make their own ice cream flavors.  The two couples meet when Jamie and Darby attend one of Josh's lectures.  Jamie is a documentary filmmaker as well, and wants to study under Josh, and even invites him to join one of his own film projects about tracking down an old Facebook friend which leads to a bigger story than initially realized.  The influence of Jamie and Darby starts rubbing off on Josh and Cornelia.  Before long, Josh and Cornelia are wearing hip fedoras, riding bikes everywhere, taking hip hop workout classes, and confusing their middle aged friends, who think the couple might be experiencing a midlife crisis of some sort.

These moments that are focused on the blossoming relationship between Josh and Cornelia and Jamie and Darby is when While We're Young works so beautifully.  Baumbach's dialogue has a certain Woody Allen feel to it, as the characters talk about living in Manhattan and how they interact with each other.  The movie also has fun with pop culture references, ranging everywhere from The Goonies to the old television commercials featuring a mascot named Cookie O'Puss.  There are some wonderful small moments throughout the film that ring true, and the characters have conversations that sound genuine.  The characters will be talking about a movie, then forget who directed it, so they will immediately turn to their cell phones to look up the info.  These are the kind of things people do every day, but you never see in movies.  These are intelligent people, and it's just a joy to listen to them talk.

But then the plot steps in, and hijacks the entire film from these smart people.  I'll do my best to avoid spoilers, but Josh begins to suspect that Jamie is not everything he claims or appears to be, and cracks begin to show in the information behind the documentary Jamie is working on that seems to suggest it might be staged.  When the search for the truth becomes the driving force of the film, the characters stop talking and being real, and turn into standard movie characters.  And while the movie never really becomes bad or disappointing in any way, it is disheartening.  I was enjoying just being with these characters, I was kind of hoping that the movie would allow us the pleasure of their company for the entire running time.  Instead, it plugs them into a fairly standard plotline where Josh and Jamie become the sole focus, and Cornelia and Darby pretty much disappear.  There are still some nice moments in this half of the film, most of them dealing with Josh's strained relationship with his father-in-law (Charles Grodin), a famed filmmaker who feels that Josh never quite lived up to his potential.  These moments harken back to the earlier half of the film, where the characters truly talked with each other, instead of being manipulated by the plot. 

While We're Young ends up being a good movie, but you can see potential for a great one for most of its running time.  Still, it's often quite funny and honest, the performances are strong, and the stuff that doesn't work as well still works in some way.  This is the kind of movie that, with another rewrite or two, could have been one of the best of the year.

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