While We’re Young

— This should be my kind of film. These days, the tug and pull of the things that make youthfulness enticing and the difficulty of understanding the value of where you are on the birth/death continuum, makes anything with “Golden Years” as part of the soundtrack seem interesting. After “Greenberg” and “Frances Ha”, both good films, I’d hoped for something more from writer/director Noah Baumbach. While there are some genuinely funny things about this film, particularly for anyone who watched from afar as most of their generation bore and raised children with righteousness and superiority, no one from Generation X or the Millennials is depicted as particularly decent. Luckily, it’s a film about privileged white people so there’s no problem with them being selfish and narcissistic or, worse, young. Aside from the moments of humor, the discussions about documentary filmmaking, ethics, manipulation and authenticity, as well as the shifting nature of integrity and a misunderstanding of compromise, are interesting and, assuming they are the important takeaways from the film, redeem the film. I’d recommend it, even if it the characters themselves are a little irritating.

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[2014. 97 min. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach. Starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, and Charles Grodin.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/while-were-young-2015