Noah Baumbach's middle-aged anxiety comedy WHILE WE'RE YOUNG (Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried)

we'll see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v726Dufa3IU

Esteban pineda Velasquez22 hours ago

This is shit
Reply ·

Lol

The film centers around Stiller and Naomi Watts, who play fortysomething husband-and-wife filmmakers going though a midlife crisis when they meet Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried.

The young Brooklyn hipsters bring out their childlike-wonder and force them to confront how far they’ve come in life — one hip-hop class and one fixie bike ride at a time.

starring Adam Driver's pink lips

— one hip-hop class and one fixie bike ride at a time.
— one hip-hop class and one fixie bike ride at a time.
— one hip-hop class and one fixie bike ride at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWHniL8MyMM

So is Amanda in the bullpen warming up to take over for Greta?

One good scene between Charles Grodin and Adam Driver could make this movie.

Ew.

movies where characters constantly have to restate the thesis of the movie

this looks great

well yeah everyone knows that millennials fetishize yesteryear's garbage already, but let's hope there's more

Is that Ad Rock?

'tis

Wait, when did he say that.

hmmmm? Survivor joke

Eye of the Tiger?

yes

Hall & Oates are shit wdve been ballsier

I don't think Baumbach will ever top The Squid & the Whale, but I've liked everything to varying degrees, and I'd probably rank this one second. (This or Margot's Wedding, which I liked more than most people.) There's a certain stuff-has-to-happen contrivance about it, key elements felt like they were on loan--Driver's duplicity from Broadcast News, the old intellectual from Crimes and Misdemeanors; the Vivaldi music seems to be an homage to Rushmore--and while Stiller's fine, his range is narrow, to put it charitably. There's a lot here, though: great final shot (the look of dismay/horror on Naomi Watts' face), Grodin's very good, Stiller's deadpan puzzlement over Driver's Facebook concept, a funny-silly Rosemary's Baby reenactment, Stiller remembering when "Eye of the Tiger" was simply considered bad (I experience that feeling a lot on ILM). I'm actually going through a much smaller-scale version of the film's central dilemma, spelled out in the prologue, so maybe I was especially receptive to it.

I'm reading back over the thread, and wow--I felt like I recognized Stiller's friend, but I totally missed that it was Ad-Rock.

this is his best film since squid, without a doubt. and if dating greta gerwig helped inspire this one, then at least she has done something worthwhile in her career. did think they missed something though when naomi watts says to ben stiller at the end that 'it doesnt matter about the fraudulent nature of the doc, cos its about HIM'. that was exactly the problem!

XPS There's a bunch of Vivaldi mandolin pieces in The Wild Child, one of those mid-level Truffaut's the Anderson's and Baumbach's of the world go gaga over.

Truthfully, I didn't know that was a Vivaldi piece--I dropped his name with such authority--and spent about five minutes online figuring that out; The Wild Child did come up, so I guess they're both paying homage to that.

I didn't really buy everyone's shrug of the shoulders over Driver's legerdemain--I felt like there was a pointer out, with NOBODY CARES! scrawled across a blackboard--but I thought it basically worked. I did like the way Driver kept pulling out the word "timeline" as his cover (and how Stiller called him on it).

End of this movie falls completely apart once Driver's sinister nature is revealed (Watts' and Grodin's reaction didn't strike me as particularly plausible) and final shot is just boring usual "old people shock". I was reasonably amused for 2/3s (Watts and Driver are both quite good and there a number of good bits) but Stiller is mostly miscast since acting smart is well beyond his range and he's not confident enough to make his ridiculous dialogue funny.

watts didnt seem to have enough to say, all her acting seemed to be done facially (and even then, mostly limited to looking shocked or embarassed, though maybe this was also the strength of her acting, that it didnt seem to affect the movie that much)

The more I think about the so-what reaction of Grodin and Watts--especially Watts--the more it bothers me. Driver isn't just "being young," as Stiller himself reluctantly shrugs at the end of the film; what Driver does is every bit as awful as Stiller wants everyone to believe, and it's a rather shallow cynicism (Baumbach's? the characters'?) to pretend otherwise.

Disagree strongly about the last shot (xpost). Seeing as it was Stiller and Watts who were wedded to their devices, their horror is at the very least ambiguously self-directed. (Before we know Driver's such a creep, I really liked his halt to looking up marzipan: "Let's just not know.")

If the joke was meant to be ambiguous then I think Baumbach overplayed it.

Driver is, I assume, at least partly supposed to be based around Catfish guy(s) right with at least a few more layers of sociopathy and manipulation thrown in to boot.

they dropped the ball at the end with the ethical arguments. seemed to decide on an apathetic shrug 'well its youth, who knows why they do what they do?' rather than a qualified acceptance/dismissal of it, as if to not appear too bitter. a bit like they/baumbach were still afraid of appearing bitter and old, rather than accepting that being bitter and old for a reason can actually be merited (also maybe that 'well there are bigger things to worry about'). also wonder if how the way the father in law was unwilling to consider that there were flaws with the 'process', was designed to rile/justify older viewers' ire that traditional ethics really are all going to hell. the film is quite critical of 20 somethings, but tries to push that away at the end.

or maybe i am also just bitter.

i was worried w/ the last 1/3 once the scheme was discovered by stiller but it all worked for me how it fizzled, the way grodin's character earlier acknowledged that he prob was ruthlessly focused on success in his youth & prob neglected naomi and how stiller lacked that attitude def parallels jaime's present manipulation and the way from jaime's pov he sees nothing really wrong w/ it. young-er ppl def can be duplicitous like that ime and shrug it off, i think this movie would be much worse w/ some standing on principals shunning of driver by everyone involved

its also v funny & well written, is an easy gimmick but the ayuhausca scene - "i voted for romney" *puke*, etc is great

watts didnt seem to have enough to say, all her acting seemed to be done facially (and even then, mostly limited to looking shocked or embarassed, though maybe this was also the strength of her acting, that it didnt seem to affect the movie that much)

― StillAdvance, Sunday, April 5, 2015 7:27 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love her facial expressions, and she's amazing @ them

lotta v small lines that were just perfect idk

ad-rock saying the baby recognizes his voice cuz he read it stephen kings the tommyknockers in the womb

dree hemingway as teh roommate tipper waking up and saying shes going to the deli to get goldfish

everything w/ the hedge fund bro

trailer looks scarily reminiscent of This Is 40/ Knocked Up but jeez nothing could be that bad.

loving Baumbach's constant use of Macca/ Wings in this and Greenberg.

Completely lost me in the last third - no way does the major documentarian and doc producer just laugh off "he's telling the story of his girlfriend's mother's cancer as his own" as "not that important"/"the movie's about him" and Watts starts to confront Driver about being a sociopath then sees Stiller then kind of drops it to continue working?

Thought Seyfried/Watt's friendship, was the most interesting part of the movie then it just gets forgotten even before Seyfried exits.

film is basically like a zillion thinkpieces on generational differences/what technology is doing to us/the young etc compressed into 90 mins. the ending wasnt thought out that well, ethically, and let the whole thing down.

Completely lost me in the last third - no way does the major documentarian and doc producer just laugh off "he's telling the story of his girlfriend's mother's cancer as his own" as "not that important"/"the movie's about him" and Watts starts to confront Driver about being a sociopath then sees Stiller then kind of drops it to continue working?

I thought the movie might explore the element of "staging" that underlies most classic documentaries (esp. Nanook of the North, given that Stiller refers to it in the lecture hall). But afterwards I decided to call it the hipster[1] All About Eve, and forget about it.

[1] Which term do people use more carelessly: "film noir" or "hipster"?

they should've been suspicious of Driver when his choice out of the massive wall of vinyl was Lionel Richie's "All Night Long"

the story in this article is EXACTLY why baumbach fumbled just when he really had a chance to actually make a point about ethics (right down to lying about cancer) -

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/22/wellness-gurus-belle-gibson-pseudoscience

23-year-old Belle Gibson, who claimed in a blog to have cured her terminal brain cancer by cutting out gluten and sugar. Her blog spawned an app, which was downloaded more than 300,000 times, followed by an inevitable book, The Whole Pantry, featuring photos of brown food photographed in a perfect rustic kitchen.

The Food Babe has claimed that non-organic apples can be more fattening than hot fudge sundaes
So far, so zeitgeist. But there was one problem: Gibson had never had cancer. In the magazine interview, Gibson admits “None of it’s true.” As the magazine puts it, unimprovably: “She says she is passionate about avoiding gluten, dairy and coffee, but doesn’t really understand how cancer works.”

no, it's a lot different and anyone who believed avoiding sugar and gluten cures cancer m/l deserves 2 be defrauded

christ the back half of this is a total trainwreck. by the time Stiller shows up on rollerblades to expose Jamie.. i couldn't believe we were supposed to take it seriously. lack of interest in this movie even from ILX who loved Frances Ha so much speaks volumes i guess.

Master Of None has totally ripped the first half hour of this movie off and turned it into a sitcom though right?

good soundtrack mind. Ad-Rock and Watts were great.

yes v memorable soundtrack, ten-minute long dance sequence of naomi watts joyfully shrugging to hit em up a real high pt of recent cinema

I like the ending

I think?? I could be convinced I'm wrong

Idk

I think the way ppl treated Jamie at the end is pretty much how enfant terribles who are terrible people are treated in our society in general, and it's not the filmmakers job to offer the righteous corrective especially when the story is about a man coming to terms with his own failure to achieve success -- bad people do succeed, and elder gatekeepers let it happen all the time, and also I'm not sure the ethical lapses described rise to the level of being all that evil in the grand scheme? And what were Josh's motivations for calling them out anyway?

I think these are interesting questions

I liked this a lot but my memory of the details of the ending are fuzzy (there's some awards show confrontation and Driver gets away w his bit, iirc?)

i much preferred Miss America, and his next film should be pretty good

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/meyerowitz-stories-movie-review-adam-sandler-noah-baumbach

Miss America was good until it ground to a halt with that whole screwball farce at the country house setup imo

In fact, Adam Sandler is frequently good! ... try Sandy Wexler; tell me some of those emotional scenes don’t actually carry weight

of fuck off

OH fuck off

Mistress America is my favorite of his films but shakey's right about the country house scene. So corny

This thing didn't work.

"Young" felt like a light enjoyable comedy about middle age during its first half and then degenerated into some wack drama at its end. Like Baumbach couldn't figure out how to end it and shoehorned some gravitas into that shit.

I don't agree it all, I thought it was quite purposeful.

I like the ending

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, August 29, 2017 1:09 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think?? I could be convinced I'm wrong

Idk

I think the way ppl treated Jamie at the end is pretty much how enfant terribles who are terrible people are treated in our society in general, and it's not the filmmakers job to offer the righteous corrective especially when the story is about a man coming to terms with his own failure to achieve success -- bad people do succeed, and elder gatekeepers let it happen all the time, and also I'm not sure the ethical lapses described rise to the level of being all that evil in the grand scheme? And what were Josh's motivations for calling them out anyway?

I think these are interesting questions

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, August 29, 2017 1:14 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

liked this movie a lot. not sure I agree completely about the ethical lapses not being so bad, particularly considering it permeates jamie’s entire character, made josh (rightfully) fee used, etc — but otherwise deej otm here

This was peak Adam Driver Hat phase.

Thought a Baumbach-Driver revive might be because of this:

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the sounds of Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver screaming at each other in Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film, Marriage Story, are being used by the United States Department of Agriculture to frighten off wolves from killing cattle on farms throughout America.

The fight between Johansson’s Nicole Barber and Driver’s Charlie Barber is one of the recordings broadcast through loudspeakers on “drone cowhands” alongside other sounds like fireworks and gunshots. These quadcopters also use thermal cameras to detect “any wolf lurking in the darkness and bathe it in a spotlight,” as described in the report.

“I need wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad,” a USDA district supervisor in Oregon explained.

The practice, known as “wolf hazing,” also employs the sounds of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” to stave off wolves from attacking vulnerable livestock.

https://consequence.net/2025/08/scarlett-johansson-adam-driver-marriage-story-usda-wolves/