Movie Review: While We're Young

While We're Young is a movie I sort of feel I should like, but I don't. I really don't. Don't get me wrong, Noah Baumbach has made some good films, The Squid and the Whale and Greenberg come to mind. However, I think my taste has changed and his tendencies to the hipster side of life is kind of off-putting. This movie just dives into hipsterism and sort of looks at it through the eyes of an aging couple lamenting where they are in life and wanting to regain the free flowing, wherever life takes me of their youth. I don't know, it just rubbed me the wrong way.



It feels like a movie that uses people as props to tell its story of a mid-life crisis. Sort of. The people are never really fleshed out and are at the will of the story being told, rather than the other way around. Frankly, the entire exercise annoyed me. Their problems were nothing major, things a lot of people go through, but it feels like they are made to be bigger things than they are, because the story called for it.

Looking at that again, it sounds stupid. What is the purpose of a movie if not to tell a story? I think it has something to do with how it is told. It feels smarmy here. It got under my skin with the established couple going gaga over the younger hipsters. No, this is not very objective, but if I tried objectivity, I would be doing everyone a disservice. I know people this will appeal to, I probably should have known better.

At the same time, there were some things I liked. I liked Stiller's Josh's attention to documentary detail and a dedication to honesty. It makes the big reveal at the end all the more annoying. It also made me think back about how I could have done things differently, or the way life just goes. You know, the usual life regrets that everyone has.

Seriously, I do not really want to spend much more time on this. I have certainly seen worse movies, but this one was just not my taste, despite liking a lot of the filmmaking aspects of it. If only it didn't annoy me so much. I kind of wanted to punch the movie. Despite my annoyances, I will recognize there was some craft and that some people will really latch on to it. It is a movie that plays to specific tastes. Not mine.

Not Recommended.