Everybody Wants Some!!

I'm willing to admit the problem may be with me.  Everybody Wants Some!! is sweetly nostalgic, does a great job of recreating the look of the time it's set in (1980), and even has some laughs.  The movie and the characters simply failed to connect with me.  I tried to keep my interest up and stay involved, but the film's total avoidance of anything resembling structure and a plot eventually wore out its welcome with me.  Watching the movie is like listening to a bunch of guys sharing a great memory you didn't participate in.  You feel happy for them, but there's no personal investment.

I can even see why writer-director Richard Linklater would want to make this movie, as it seems to be loosely based on his own experiences in college, and it probably is.  He's drawing on his own memories here, which probably have more significance for him than the audience.  I'm sure after tackling a long, multi-year project like his last film, Boyhood, Linklater just wanted to relax, and make a breezy little comedy about a bunch of guys hanging out, going to parties, and trying to pick up women.  I have no problem with that.  I simply think he is too close to the material, and doesn't realize that there's not much happening in his own movie.  Or maybe he does, and that's the whole point.  The movie is possibly just a chance for the audience to sit back and chill for two hours.  I just couldn't do it, because the people up on the screen didn't appeal to me enough.  Oh, they're not bad characters, they're just slight.  If the men are slight, then the women in this movie (save for one) are total non-entities, and by looking at the credits, aren't even given names.  They're simply referred to as Cute Coed #1, Sorority Girl #2, etc.

The movie opens in a Texas college on the last weekend of August 1980 before the Fall Semester begins.  The closest thing we have to a main character here is Jake (Blake Jenner), an incoming Freshman who has come in on a Baseball scholarship.  He arrives at an off-campus house where his other teammates live, which he will spend the weekend bonding with over beers, music, drugs and competitive games that will be used to determine the men's place in the home.  The guys of the house all have simple personalities.  There's one who knows how to chop a baseball in half with an ax.  There's one who is prone to starting fights in bars, and getting the guys kicked out.  There's one that everybody in the house gangs up on and teases.  But what they all share in common is that they like to hit bars and go to wild parties.  Either that, or they cruise the streets and try to pick up women.  They're mostly not that successful in this department, until Jake catches the attention of a cute little brunette.

This is Beverly, played by the likable rising young actress, Zoey Deutch.  Not only is she one of the few women with a name in this movie, but she's the only one with any real dialogue, and who doesn't exist simply to go off to bed with one of the guys.  She's a drama student at the college, and exposes Jake to her own personal world of weird costume parties with her artsy friends.  But they do get some really nice scenes together, and you kind of wish the movie was about Jake getting closer with her, rather than hanging out with his dumb buddies.  Whenever Beverly is on the screen, the movie slows down a bit, and actually seems to be leading somewhere.  Too bad Linklater's screenplay decides to keep her off camera so much, and not give Jake his first date with her until so late into the movie.  If there had been more scenes with them together, I may have warmed up to the film more.

I guess what bothered me about Everybody Wants Some!! is that it doesn't just feel like the director is taking it easy, it also feels like a step back.  For a filmmaker like Linklater who has made some absolutely wonderful movies, this feels like something that should have come out early in his career, not this late.  Of course, in a way, he is trying to recapture the spirit of one of his earlier films here, in this case 1993's Dazed and Confused.  This movie is even being labeled a "spiritual sequel" to the earlier film.  If you remember, that was the movie that launched the career of Matthew McConaughey, and other young actors.  The thing is, I think that was a better movie than this.  It was funnier, sharper, and had better characters.  Linklater is obviously trying to make lightning strike twice, but I don't know if this movie will have the cult hit status that Dazed... went on to. 

But what do I know?  The movie's currently sitting at 91% over on Rotten Tomatoes.  Others have embraced it.  I just couldn't.  There just wasn't enough for me to get interested in.  As I said right at the start, the problem may very well be with me.  I'm not going to go so far as to say Linklater has made a bad film, as he certainly hasn't, and there are moments I admired.  I'll just chalk this up to another case of a movie just not being made for me.

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