Review of While We're Young (2015) by Jhep — 14 Apr 2015

The Madly-Off-in-All-Directions-Nut is a tough one to crack. Those of us living with ADHD or something very close to it can readily testify to this fact. Furthermore, today’s ADHD culture exasperates the problem for just about everyone….hardly anyone is immune…....enter Noah Baumbach and his latest film “While We’re Young” - a gloriously high-energy film that can’t decide what its about and very nearly lands in the ditch as a result !…..

To be more precise Noah-Baumbach-the-Director becomes perilously entangled with wrong-headed choices that Noah-Baumbach-The-Overly-Ambitious-Scriptwriter comes up with …and it is this that very nearly land “While We’re Young” in the ditch. The good news, however, is that the film survives the perverse, near fatal “foot-shooting” antics of its script and ultimately succeeds in winning our affection and even our gratitude.

However, it was definitely a close call and the audience at the screening I attended seemed at times to be almost holding it’s breath wondering if Baumbach would pull it off.

He did and here’s how.…..For one thing there is Baumbach-the-Director’s truly joyous, at times almost ecstatic embracing of the possibilities that the cinema offers. The very strong first half of “While We’re Young” is nothing short of jubilant in its high-spiritedness and enthusiastic accounts of what movies, and indeed Life itself, has to offer. The wacky, wonderful, almost Franciscan young couple that Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts hook up with as the film begins offers Baumbach ideal material to showcase his great love of cinema and the first hour of the film goes swimmingly…….so swimmingly in fact, that it is this brilliant first half of the film that ultimately saves it from the far less successful second half. At about the mid-point of the story- quite weirdly- an entirely different movie arrives on the scene and Baumbach’s overly-ambitious, ADD scriptwriter takes control of the film !

What promised to be a “Harold and Maude-ish” escapade or a new edition of Milos Forman’s delightful “Taking Off” turns into a murky and unsatisfying. wannabe film noir; a puzzling and heady concoction of “Match Point”, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and Roman Polanski‘s “The Tenant” (with just a daub of “Double Indemnity” and “Blow Up” thrown in for good measure !)..…..anyway none of this “washes” and this second half of the film is badly in need of a far more nuanced re-write. Even worse this new plot development threatens to “sour” all that went before and the entire film threatens to IMPLODE in a key scene in which Adam Driver (who plays the husband in the free-wheeling young couple) suggests that he is not above blackmailing Naomi Watts about the brief sexual indiscretion they had together while they were both “high” on drugs.……This, along with a few other seriously “off” narrative moments, would have sunk a less interesting film by a less interesting director but “While We’re Young” recovers even from these missteps and - almost miraculously -regains its balance.

In effect Baumbach-The-Gifted-Director managing to recoup the losses incurred by Baumbach-The-Scriptwriter and the latter’s overly ambitious indeed, ultimately untenable Scriptwriters-Don‘t-Try-This-At-Home script. That the film manages to survive its “near-death” experience is also due to the wonderful cast Baumbach has assembled. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are perfect as the middle-aged couple whose life has mysteriously “stalled”. Each of them nails the “quiet desperation” that has engulfed them as they attempt to recall when was the last time they went on a trip to Europe. Adam Driver is equally powerful and convincing as their suitably quixotic and unfathomable Sammy Glickish new friend…….

(footnote- it should be noted that Baumbach CAN write great scripts- as his exquisite “Greenberg” (his masterpiece to date) proves only too well; and likewise his “Francis Ha”- a sort of updated “Perils of Pauline” set in the New York art scene and featuring an unsinkable performance by Greta Gerwig).

…All-in-all Baumbach needs to learn to stop fretting about his material and realize that in film especially More-is-Less….. and needs to trust in his innate smarts and avoid the “fussing” that very nearly destroys the delightful “souffle” that is “While We’re Young”…… Happily the “souffle” HAS survived. This is due in no small part, to the cinematic smarts that are in evidence -for example- in the scenes in which Naomi Watts’ connects with the benefits of hip hop aerobics and appears to awaken from some bewitching, decades-long coma! In the dream-like, at time indecipherable language of the cinema, these moments guide “While We’re Young” away from its stormy and potentially ruinous narrative seas and into safe harbor.