Review of While We're Young (2015) by Michael T — 15 Apr 2015

Art isn't easy. Neither is comedy. So it's pure pleasure when a filmmaker gets it all right, as Noah Baumbach does in his bitingly funny take on aging. While We're Young mines for humor in broken places, and reunites Baumbach with his Greenberg star Ben Stiller. Stiller's Josh Srebnick isn't a complete A-hole this time out, but he is just as neurotic. Josh is a documentarian who's been tinkering with his latest work for a decade now. His wife, Cornelia (Naomi Watts), unwittingly puts him under the shadow of documentary genius Leslie Breitbart (Charles Grodin), who also happens to be her father.

But for fortysomething Josh, theh real threat is youth, summed up in a quote from Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder that opens the film. Josh and Cornelia are feeling alienated from their age-appropriate, kid obsessed BFF's, played hilariously by Maria Dizzia and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys. Cornelia and Josh are more than used to being childless.

So what to do? Enter twentysomethings Jamie (Adam Driver of Girls) and his wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Jamie is an aspiring filmmaker who sucks up to Josh any chance he gets, while Darby takes Cornelia to hip-hop classes. Baumbach generates stinging and caustic laughs at the expense of watching Josh and Cornelia trying to recapture their youth, but compassion is there also. Stiller is amazing at blending wit with physical schtick. His scenes with Driver, a careerist in hipster garb, are pitch perfect portraits of generational comic warfare. Baumbach gets a bit carried away with his themes, but his penchant for rubbing nerves raw is never in doubt. Salute.