Review of While We're Young (2015) by Joel M — 09 Aug 2015

Writer-Director Noah Baumbach's "While We're Young" has some young freshness on what it is to be in your 40's physically & mentally, but unfortunately it includes a restless plot on how young people are egoistic narcissists; which the latter has been a burned theme so many times before in movies. But even though it has some good young and bad restless, it still well tells the "days of our lives" of us in our 40's'; present company included. The film stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as Josh & Cornelia, a mid-40's childless couple who meet the free-spirit spontaneous young married couple Jamie and Darby played by Adam Driver & Amanda Seyfreid. Josh is a documentary filmmaker who had a successful first film, but has taken him more than a decade to complete his sophomoric effort. Cornelia supports Josh but is innately heartbroken from two past miscarriages. Jamie becomes Josh's protégé and even asks Josh to help him on his student documentary project. Josh takes quite a bromance liking to Jamie which consequently enthuses a rejuvenated attitude to Josh which causes him to act odd for his age as he tries to bring back some of his ways when he was twenty years younger; but this is no "hot tub time machine". What I liked about the film is how it authentically displays the trials and tribulations of men and women in their 40's' both mentally and physically; especially when Josh discovers he has a herniated disc and has presbyopia; speaking as a man in his mid 40's I can definitely relate to that and also have those conditions among others. Anyyyyyyways, what got old for me real quick in "While We're Young" was the plot of the making of Jamie and also Josh's documentary projects; let's just say it did not make the cut for me. So I felt "young at heart" for Baumbach's screenplay of the picture, but the direction was more like a "stranger in the night" (and day for that matter) that I did not want to befriend so much. Hey, so I put some Sinatra tune references there, cut me some slack, the film was set in "New York, New York". Seasoned pros Stiller and Watts were very solid in their performances as Josh & Cornelia, but that sentiment could not be injected into the overacted performances of Driver and Seyfried as Jamie and Darby. All in all, I do slightly recommend a viewing of "While We're Young" for the young and old; but maybe not for the not too young and the not too old. I will oooooold you to that!

*** Average.