Review of Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) by Keith C — 27 Apr 2016

Dazed and Confused in the best way possible, college love letter Everybody Wants Some finds Richard Linklater killing at what he does best: very believable dialogue, a very relatable nostalgia, and a very rockable soundtrack.

In this '80s-set R-rated comedy, a group of college baseball players navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adulthood.

With Dazed & Confused's DNA threaded so thoroughly through this production, Linklater's latest continually looks and sounds like a sequel in every way possible. The meandering story - an underclassman learning the ropes from a hard-partying slightly older cast of characters and slowly falling in love despite this - rings familiar. Said characters - some aggressively competitive like Ben Affleck's O'Bannion, some erudite like Jason London's Pink, and some skeevy but amusing like Matthew McCaughney's Wooderson from Dazed - seem like extensions of the same personas under a different name. The casting of actors largely unknown also mirrors the forebear (remember, Affleck and McCaughney weren't marquee names either in 1993). Then, there's that soundtrack consisting of Van Halen, Foreigner, Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Blondie, and Pete Townsend (to name a few). Heck, even the Texas locations (the very same Emporium from Dazed becomes Sound Machine here) smack of Deja Vu. All of this works beautifully in the film's favor, however. In the case of Everybody Wants Some, familiarity breeds the exact opposite of contempt because Linklater's screenplay is so humorous and heartfelt. For anybody who moved away to college but also came of age in the '80s when smart phones and other interactive devices were as foreign as a Flux Capacitor, the situations echo wonderful memories and tug at your sentimental chords. Nobody's characters walk and talk like his. Where they end up is someplace just short of perfection.

Bottom line: Runnin' with the Devil You Know.