Everybody Wants Some!! – Film Review by Shane Larkin

Director: Richard Linklater
Writer: Richard Linklater
Stars: Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Ryan Guzman

This really shouldn’t work as well as it does. A 1980s set college comedy brazenly fixated on a group of chiselled, wildly privileged jocks coasting through life like every day’s guaranteed to be better than the last; it’s not an experience that seems destined to instil a whole lot of empathy at first. These could be the noxious dude-bro meatheads you’d see portrayed as the villains in a teen movie made a few decades ago. Women (for the most part) only exist in their world as trophies to be obtained. Theirs is a life of perpetual dick measuring contests. So how is it that Everybody Wants Some, Richard Linklater’s so called spiritual sequel to 1993’s beloved Dazed and Confused, turns out to be such a warm, funny, breezy cloud of pleasant company and welcoming vibes? I think it’s due in part to the strength of the performances and the charming specificity of the characters, but also the way that Linklater embraces the cliched side of this kind of college experience while mining it for something more meaningful, and something more in line with his usual thematic concerns. These guys might be too buzzed to notice, but they too are subject to the looming, attenuating passage of time and all its complexities. Alright, alright, alright…

We’re in south-east Texas, “My Sharona” is blaring, and Jake (Blake Jenner) is cruising into town in his muscle car with a crate of dusty vinyl in the passenger seat. It’s 1980. He’s about to start college as a freshman pitcher on a baseball scholarship. He arrives at his shabby accommodation, meets his fellow baseball players, and the shambling narrative meanders on from there as the guys party, dance, chase girls, pound beers, take bong hits, play knuckles and ping pong and establish a pecking order in those few days before classes begin. An actual timer appears occasionally in the corner of the screen to remind us of this impending deadline.

Initially, Jake just feels like the audience surrogate through which we’ll meet the more vibrant oddballs on the team. There’s the jokester confidant (Glen Powell, probably the most vivid presence here), the cartoonish loon (Juston Street, maybe sketched a little too far outside the reality of the movie), the deep-south hayseed (Will Brittain), the doofus (Temple Baker), the fiercely competitive preener (Tyler Hoechlin, moustache level: Selleck), the gawky ass-kisser (Tanner Kalina, moustache level: pubescent), the smooth operator (J. Quinton Johnson), the stoner philosopher (Wyatt Russell), and so on. But as Jake starts to hang out with a girl (Zoey Deutch) who might qualify as long-term relationship material, there’s the sense that he might be the one to mature beyond the pecking order, to transcend baseball while relating to a bunch of guys who might not.

Linklater’s approach is a wry one and he doesn’t really lionize his characters, but he treats them seriously. There’s an almost anthropological fascination at work here. Powell’s character uses the word “tribal” to describe one particular altercation outside a disco, and the word couldn’t be more appropriate; this is a homosocial pack of bros that has its particular rituals, customs and gestures. The dynamics feel both familiar (as a guy) and totally fascinating when pursued to such extremities in this scenario. And they’re willing to cross tribes as they construct their identity, at a time in their lives when they still can, and at a moment when culture has diversified into a huge number of niches. They’re right there at the beginning of it, making sense of where they are, where they belong, and defining themselves in relation to those around them.

“Finding the tangents within the framework, therein lies the artistry” drawls Wyatt Russell’s character at one point, dissecting the Pink Floyd song playing in the middle of a loungey bong session. He could just as well be talking about Linklater’s whole approach to filmmaking. Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, the Before trilogy, they’re all concerned with what happens between the big moments, when connections are made and life is honestly lived. Here, Linklater seems to be looking back positively at this reprieve from adulthood, a time before life really begins, before the big decisions have to be made, even while the spectre of time looms overhead and the clock is ticking before first day of class. They might sleep through it, nursing their hangovers and coasting on through, but that clock isn’t going to stop.