"Everybody Wants Some!!" Review

During the release of 2014’s “Boyhood,” many critics assumed the film’s main character (a bratty, teenage, aspiring photographer with a surprisingly punch-able face) was meant to be a surrogate for the film’s writer and director, Richard Linklater.

However, Linklater was quick to deny this in interviews, as he told Rolling Stone Magazine, “I was an ex-jock. I had to make a choice which side of me to show, and I bet on the ethereal, arty guy as a more interesting kid.”

In hindsight, accusations of a creator stand-in should have been reserved for his newest film, “Everybody Wants Some!!,” as its central character seems to fit the ethereal jock role quite nicely. The movie is now showing at Eugene's Bijou Art Cinemas.

In the fall of 1980, Jake (Blake Jenner) is an up-and-coming baseball star moving to Southeast Texas for his freshman year of college, bringing with him only a knapsack of tawdry clothing, and an impossibly diverse vinyl record collection. (I mean, seriously? The Talking Heads and Crosby, Stills and Nash? My suspension of disbelief will only stretch so far.) He rooms in a small house on campus with his teammates, a ragtag group of college prospects, as they spend their nights embarking on testosterone-driven quests for sex and alcohol.

Billed as a spiritual successor to Linklater’s 1993 film “Dazed and Confused,” “Everybody Wants Some!!” shares that film’s inescapable sense of nostalgia, attempting to capture the early '80’s through the thickest pair of rose-colored glasses.

As it's still early into the decade, many of the more persistent trends of the '70's seep through. Meaning, disco fortunately isn’t dead yet. Only dying, and relegated to on campus dance clubs, which apparently are magical wonderlands where 18-year-olds are offered free beer, and people unironically wear some of the most kitsch shit ever manufactured by sentient life. Yes, '70’s fashion is still in full swing, as we haven’t yet stocked every Goodwill from coast to coast with discarded bellbottoms and tins of mustache wax.

The decade to come is only hinted at, as the boys partake in a “Wayne’s World”-esque car ride singalong to The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rappers Delight,” and perform some cathartic moshing at a punk-rock concert. Of course both hip-hop and punk will become homogenized into American culture by the decade’s end, but here they’re still very much esoteric. As the team’s slack-jawed catcher puts it, “I don’t know man, I kinda like Van Halen.”

Like any place filled with unchecked alpha males, the team’s house immediately descends into an environment of competition and machismo pride. Be it “Whose ping-pong skills reign supreme?” or “Who can achieve the most biblical bong rip?” every facile interaction is taken as an opportunity to assert male dominance.

Their banter of back-and-fourth bullshitting is brilliant, and it makes “Everybody Wants Some!!” Linklater’s most consistent comedy since“School of Rock.” Though the director receives much of his props from Sundance kids who won’t shut up about his career long meditation on the human perception of time (or some bullshit, i dunno), this is a reminder that he’s also the man who gave us the funniest Jack Black performance ("High Fidelity" notwithstanding). Even if dialogue between teammates can be incredibly crass, peppered with antiquated misogyny and homophobia, it rarely feels forced or inauthentic.

The opposing voice to Jake’s macho surroundings is Beverly (Zoey Deutch), a theatre major with strawberry auburn hair who reciprocates his appreciation for poetry and music and, essentially anything not involving a jock strap. On the surface, she checks every box of the manic-pixie-dream-girl archetype, but Deutch’s on-screen affability and Linklater’s deft script both assist in circumventing the trope. She ends up feeling like an actual person, rather than a crutch devised to move the story forward.

Linklater has proven to have a knack for writing animated dialogue between two equally well-educated souls. His “Before” trilogy is a fan favorite among weepy cinephiles (myself included *sniff) for exactly this reason, and he employs this same conversation technique with Jake and Beverly. Neither of them are experts in the heady topics they attempt to explore, but they both have an aptitude and awareness that captures the “I’m a college freshmen and I have ideas damn it” mindset. It can be assured that Linklater has spent enough time participating in intelligent discussion and, more importantly, has listened, as opposed to waiting to talk.

Jake’s “jock or artist” dichotomy becomes the crux of the entire picture. This inner conflict isn’t exactly original, but what differentiates “Everybody Wants Some!!” from other such coming-of-age films is that Jake's transition from youth to adulthood feels almost ancillary. Unlike “Dazed and Confused” or “American Graffiti” that emphasize the importance of character choices, “Everybody Wants Some!!” is about the discovery that choices exist in the first place. We only witness the three days leading up to Jake’s fall term, closing out just shy of his first classroom lecture. As a result, his revelations are unobtrusive. He’s someone cautiously approaching a crossroads, and we view him just before his crucial pivot.

But what direction will he turn? Here’s hoping Linklater gets around to answering that someday.

Maybe in another 23 years.

5/5

At a Glance:

Title: “Everybody Wants Some!!”

Director: Richard Linklater

Starring: Blake Jenner, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell, Will Brittain, J. Quinton Johnson, Temple Baker, Juston Street

Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some!!" is a consistently pleasant time-capsule, complete with a talented cast of soon-to-be known young actors.

See it at Eugene's Bijou Art Cinemas at 3:30 and 8:30.