Review: While We're Young

Noah Baumbaugh offers a structurally messy but overall enjoyable flick in WHILE WE'RE YOUNG, a film that broaches the subject of age and of authenticity.

"Documentary is about someone else; fiction is about me." Documentarian Josh (Ben Stiller) uses this quote from Jean-Luc Godard to begin a class he teaches at the local university, expressing his disagreement -- that documentaries, if done well, can in fact reveal something about the person who made them. Josh, who years earlier had produced a well-received documentary, now teaches while working on another documentary -- one that should have been finished ten years ago. His wife, Cornelia (Naomi Watts), is also a documentarian, producing documentaries for her father, the famous Leslie Breitbart (Charles Grodin).

Josh and Cornelia have hit their 40's. They go to bed early; their friends have started to have kids (they haven't, due to complications). Just when they're accepting their transition into middle age, they meet Jamie and Darby, a couple who audit Josh's class (played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). Jamie and Darby are the epitome of hipster youth, regarding the old as modern and the new as outdated: as Josh and Cornelia constantly check their phones and play games on devices, watch Netflix before bed, etc., Jamie and Darby watch VHS tapes, play board games, and take satisfaction in not Googling words that they can't remember ("Let's just not know," as Darby says). As Josh and Cornelia become infatuated with their new friends' youth, they begin to lose touch with friends their own age, scrambling to rediscover themselves.

But beyond their desperate attempt to "return to their youth", there is something else that isn't quite right with their new friends. Jamie is also a budding documentarian, and as the film progresses, we see him taking advantage of Josh and Cornelia's more malleable qualities. While Josh dreams of putting himself into his documentaries and presenting the honest truth, making it more about the process than about being successful, Jamie wants to present truth wrapped in fiction in order to make it more pallatable. He is a man of perceived process but in reality, he's bent on success -- which means that what his work reveals about him is just a fabrication of himself.

This is not your typical Ben Stiller role, and though the acting starts off a little shaky, by the end of the film the characters are able to come to life in all their complexities. This is a pretty dense story sprinkled with comic relief... It is clear that Baumbach has a lot to say in this film, though it may be a bit overloaded: to be honest, the idea of authenticity is the strongest theme throughout the film, but the "young vs. old" conflict muddles the message. It's one of those tricky situations where there is too much going on in the plot, but if it all didn't happen, the film would be found lacking... but regardless of its crowded structure, WHILE WE'RE YOUNG is an enjoyable watch. Come check it out this week at the Midtown Cinema!