Everybody Wants Some!!

As a fan of Dazed and Confused, when I found out about this film I was ecstatic but it just doesn't deliver; I really wanted it to be great but it never really gets there. The characters are mostly forgettable and not even overly likable. At times it seems like a bad copy of Dazed and Confused, with lines like "that's what I'm talking' about" repeated and characters such as the coach (who seems like a carbon copy of the assistant coach from Dazed and Confused) and Finnegan (who seems very much like an attempt to replicate McConaughey's Wooderson). It's set in the 80s but there really isn't an 80s experience here like Dazed and Confused delivered. Dazed and Confused gave us a look at the cars and some of the iconic things about the 70s, as well as experiences that gave the viewer a look at what being a teen in the 70s may have been like, but Everybody Wants Some never really delivers any of that. The performances here aren't bad (with the exception of one character who, to me, seemed like a parody) and it's not a terrible movie, it just lacks the magic of Dazed and Confused and in the end it's really just a flat film that never really gets the viewer excited or delivers. Of course, this is just my opinion and you may really enjoy it, so check it out yourself and form your own opinion because it's at least worth seeing once.

"Don't be afraid to let the experience find you." Willoughby (Wyatt Russell)

Everybody Wants Some!! is a real comedy, not some reality show knock off about college athletes gone bad. It's 1980, it feels like 1980, and the kids are full of 1980's optimism expressed in their passion for baseball and hot chicks. The "experience" the very high, hippie philosopher Willoughby promotes in the quote above comes for most at college, where new experiences find and transform.

The hero is Jake (Blake Jenner), a freshman pitcher joining the rest of the college baseball team in one of their two houses provided off campus, conveniently unsupervised. He represents the youthful idealism of a former high-school star athlete on scholarship at a small south Texas college. Linklater's plot is so charmingly rambling, like his favorite pinball motif, that character development is acceptably absent. With the pastiche of pranks that serve as episodes, seriousness can't prevail anymore than it did in Linklater's classic, Dazed and Confused.

The most interesting character has to be Finn (Glen Powell), the ladies' man spouting Linklater aphorisms like the one above. He's a woman-con who nevertheless comes out with thoughts for life amidst his clowning.

What makes this film different is that from the beginning these wisecracking jocks know they're not going to be picked up by the pros, but they still talk about that happening with the right realistic attitude. Director Richard Linklater, coming off his Oscar-nominated Boyhood, in which he showed unique insight into a growing boy, now paints a portrait of young men quickly transitioning into men who know what's up.

During this coming of age story, the players play at college life with the same gusto they show for their sport, not always scoring but always in pursuit, as if both games were evidence of their right to success, an American characteristic to be sure. Seeing a possible scout painting a house near the playing field, the realization is that he may not be a scout. All everybody can infer is it's good to be ready when any of life's "scouts" should come by.

The wit is omnipresent and occasionally brilliant, evidenced by these two insults: dipshitification and fuckwithery—used more than once to put someone down and toughen up at the same time.

Amidst Twilight Zone VHS's, Van Halen, and Carl Sagan, Linklater has returned us to 1980). And dare I say it, gives a good name to nostalgia.

This film tells the story of a man who enters college, and stays with his baseball teammates in a communal house. He explores his adult life, with the company and help from his baseball teammates.

Perhaps due to the fact that I am not interested in baseball, I find the story rather non engaging. All I see is a bunch of testosterone fuelled guys doing silly things, having parties, drinking and shouting. It doesn't have a real plot, as there is no central message or moral story to be delivered. We see the lives of these people in three days, condensed in two hours. I don't know what the point of the film is, but i certainly do not find their lives interesting.

Everybody Wants Some!! was a perfect film for this moment: it consists of little more than a bunch of overly-competitive jocks joking with each other, partying, and trying to get laid over the course of three days before school even starts. It's intelligently written, fun, well-acted, and well-shot. What more could you ask for? Linklater, of course, does it all in a slice of life fashion: the opening of the film doesn't even attempt to describe what's going to happen and the end of the film barely describes what happened beforehand. The movie is almost meditative, and yet continually looking for stimulus in the largest and tiniest things... really whatever kind of stimulus they can get their hands on. Story-wise, it unfolds over almost every part of the era, which is, as far as I could tell, undefined yet seemingly somewhere during the 80s. Each night takes us to a different flavor of the time: disco, punk, you name it... but the genius of the script is that you don't really realize you've been given a tasting menu until you've already eaten everything. It just seems natural when it happens. Everything in this film seems natural, and that's a credit to the director, but also the actors. I imagine casting was the most important part of putting this film together and it seems to have been a success: every actor kills their part. Were they even acting? I have a feeling they were just being themselves. If you want to watch some kids mess around and laugh with them or at them, Everybody Wants Some!! not only is your movie, but probably will be your movie for a long time coming.

Yes, the movie was realistic and there were a few, sparse moments of tenderness between Jake and his romantic interest, but I was disappointed by the imbalanced focus of this movie. As most college students, then and now, are not hardcore jocks, this is a skewed vision of college life in that era. We get scant input from other groups on campus.

Compared to Dazed and Confused, which featured a much broader spectrum of teenage life in the mid 70s, including jocks, budding intellectuals, burn-outs, etc., Everybody Wants Some is mainly focused on college jock life and the pervasive misogyny one might expect. At times insightful, and also humorous, the movie simply observes the lives of its characters. But it pales compared to its predecessor, and the overwhelming emphasis on the misogynistic and competitive sexual exploits of its characters tends to fracture and efface the movie's charms.