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Director: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Amanda Seyfried,  Naomi Watts,  Ben Stiller,  Adam Driver, Charles Grodin,  Maria Dizzia,  Brady Corbet,  Dree Hemingway,  Adam Senn, James Saito
Running time: 97 mins
Rating: 15
Release date: April 3rd, 2015

Having loved writer/director Noah Baumbach’s previous effort FRANCES HA, there isn’t much that would keep me away from seeing a new film of his – not even having no one to go and see it with. After all, who really needs a date when you’re spending 97 minutes with the eminently likeable Ben Stiller, Adam Driver, Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried? And so it was that I took myself off to the movies last night to see WHILE WE’RE YOUNG – an admirable and amusing film for the most part but one that ultimately doesn’t quite know what it wants to be when it grows up.

Josh (Stiller) and Cornelia (Watts) are a successful, Manhattanite married couple who have enjoyed moderate success in their documentary filmmaking careers: they live in a spacious apartment, go on spontaneous European jaunts, and seem to live quite comfortably despite the fact that Josh has been working on a very convoluted documentary for the better part of eight years. Just when it seems that all their friends are outgrowing them by having babies and winding down, in come 25 year olds Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried)- an achingly hip Harlem couple who befriend Josh and Cornelia almost instantly. They’re fun and quirky and hipster (he is an aspiring film maker, she makes organic, artisanal ice cream) in the way that most Baumbach characters are, and though the new friendships are fun and energising for a while, things take a sour turn when Josh  begins to suspect Jamie is not all he appears to be.

While We're Young

There are plenty of things to love about this film – and the running time is as good a place as any to start. When most films these days clock in at well over two hours, I’m predisposed to like WHILE WE’RE YOUNG based on its brevity alone. It never feels self–indulgent or tired; looking back there is not one scene that stands out as one that should have been cut. There’s also the fact that it’s observant of hipster culture without ever ridiculing it; it’s not mean or a satire – it’s just a well-drawn portrait of a certain part of Western society. It helps that Driver and Seyfried are charming enough actors that they can be forgiven most things; when Seyfried declares “I only like children who don’t speak English”, you just kind of roll with it; even though it is faintly ridiculous, you don’t despise either of them for keeping a live hen in their loft.

The comparisons between the young and the (not very) old are often amusing. In an early scene the four sit together trying to recall something and Josh immediately whips out his iPhone to look it up, only to be told by a placid Jamie: “No, don’t look it up. Let’s just try and remember.” Where Josh and Cornelia listen to CDs and play Candy Crush, Jamie and Darby have an impressive vinyl collection and pass the time with board games. It’s an astute observation – the idea that while older generations are embracing the speed and availability of information, the younger are trying to recapture a time they never even lived through.

While We're Young

Unfortunately, at a certain point Baumbach appears to get all meta on us because for a film about a midlife crisis this movie has a complete and utter nervous breakdown at about the halfway point. The first half is little – and I mean that as a compliment. Not a great deal happens, but events are well observed, the characters feel real, and the effect that Jamie and Darby have on their new older friends is infectious, as an audience member you can perfectly understand their appeal. It feels like a small, New York film about friends and growing up, one which will end with a subtle life lesson and all involved parting ways a little different to how they were before. It feels like early Woody Allen- ANNIE HALL maybe. Sadly, around the fifty minute mark it becomes MATCH POINT: darker, tenser, and nowhere near as good. It’s almost as though Baumbach lost confidence in what he was doing and decided to make everything bigger – suddenly there’s a plot, a twist, some intrigue and a lot of tension: all of which is fine on paper, but the shift in tone is jarring to say the least. At one point Josh and Jamie circle each other in a high rise office in a scene set to music so menacing I truly believed one was about to murder the other by way of the window. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good scene, it’s just that it wasn’t a scene from the charming little film I’d been watching beforehand.

Still, there are far worse things in life – and cinema – than an inferior second half (among them, the idea that perhaps life is a lot like this film: the first half is incredible, but it steadily gets worse and worse until, finally, it ends).  I imagine that when I’m older I will not look back on this film as a waste of 97 minutes of my precious youth, but instead look back on the whole outing rather fondly, which is perhaps all you can really ask for.

Verdict

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Film and Theatre Journalist Follow @NessTroop Follow @filmandtvnow