3.5 stars out of 5
Richard Linklater spent 12 years making this movie… oh wait, it wasn’t this one? Never mind. I feel like I’ve seen enough Linklater offerings at this point to say — at least in my own opinion — he’s not a fantastic filmmaker. But, you know what, he’s pretty good. And this is a pretty good movie.
My dear, wonderful friend Amy, in asking if I’d already seen the film, said, “You’ll like it. I thought it was good/fun. Long on nostalgia and some good music, but short on plot, unless you count trying to get laid. Pretty sure he wants to relive his Texas youth through his movies. Who needs a plot for that? Haha.”
And, you’re really not going to find a more accurate review than that. It’s a laid-back, entertaining, fun movie. Though set at the very tail end of summer, it really feels like a “summer” flick. Incoming freshman Jake (played by Blake Jenner, who was on Glee but I didn’t watch that) shows up at (fictional) Southeast Texas University, where he’s slated to be a pitcher on the baseball team. It’s 1980 and there are lots of girls in short shorts and the sun is shining and there’s rock ‘n roll: Life is good.
Three days before classes begin, Jake moves into one of the two “baseball houses.” And… some stuff happens. But not very much. The guys meet each other. They drink. They go dancing. And it’s mostly in pursuit of, like Amy said, getting laid. Now, that might sound like a crass 1980s comedy, but Everybody Wants Some!! has some real gentleness and sweetness going for it. And plot twists that you might expect to happen (the big misunderstanding with the girl, the traumatic college-athlete injury, etc.), well, they just never do. It’s mellow, man.
Male bonding is a major aspect of this movie. But it’s not the sort of gung-ho jocks deal you’d get in other movies. (And since it’s 1980, college sports aren’t represented as the “Industry” they clearly are today.) I don’t think you have to be a dude, or a former athlete, to appreciate the different personality types on display here. There’s the stud who’s a little more mature than everyone else, and the smooth talker, and the person whose life is really back home, and the innocent, and the stoner, and the really weird one, and the “Joey,” etc. Jake, meanwhile, is our “everyperson,” the stand-in for us viewers. He’s maybe a little bit too handsome to be fully relatable, but Jenner does a solid job nonetheless.
And there’s the love interest: Zoey Deutch (who I didn’t mention in my review of Beautiful Creatures) as Beverly. She’s a freshman performing-arts major, and Deutch plays her perfectly: wide-eyed and really talky, because her head her just bursting with all sorts of thoughts as she transitions from girl to woman. There’s a split-screen phone call with Jake in which we absolutely fall in love with Beverly. Hooray.
In another interesting twist, we’re in sort of a Peanuts world; there are no grown-ups around. Nobody gets dropped off by their parents, the coach makes a brief appearance but is not allowed on the field until classes begin; we see one professor for a hot second, etc. So we just get to observe college kids, untainted in their little Petri dish.
Some people might hate the ending of this movie, but for me, it really fits in with the groove Linklater has created. If anything, Everybody Wants Some!! (oh man I love the double exclamation points) feels more like a pilot for a TV series than a full-fledged movie. But I would totally watch that show.
Jack Silbert, curator