Review of While We're Young (2015) by Matt G — 27 Apr 2015

The older I get, the more I realize growing up and finding purpose doesn't end at a certain age, and we only have so much of this life to enjoy. This overwhelmingly quick passage of time is looked at with humor and heart in 45-year-old director Baumbach's (Frances Ha, The Squid and the Whale) most purely comedic film to date. Through hilariously relatable awkwardness and tons of misplaced conceit, While We're Young presents a fear of aging that replaces gerascophobia with loads of laughs.

Stiller and Watts play a long-married filmmaking couple who befriend and ultimately admire a young artistic pair and their apparent zest for life. Through Baumbach's smoothly prompt style, the story of these hipsters moves along quite nicely, readily mining their pretentious and absurd community for all the comedy it holds. The script is full of some great lines that show a witty understanding of adulthood in all its stages.

The cast also stands-out. I usually prefer Stiller in his more over-the-top roles (Zoolander), but he holds his own here. Watts is outstandingly cute, funny and honest; Driver is charmingly abrasive; and Horowitz, known more for his rapping than his acting, is so natural it's hard to believe this isn't his day-job.

These older actors and filmmakers are clearly speaking from life experience, as the film studies the unique difficulties of growing old in youth-obsessed Hollywood. However, the ethical ambiguities of success and the dangers of personal pretention are universal. With so much light-hearted spunk, WWY's surface-y themes are swept up in its ageless charms.