The hits barely outnumber the misses in While We’re Young, Noah Baumbach’s latest offering. A New York City-based comedy of manners that focuses on Ben Stiller’s and Naomi Watts’ characters’ mid-life crisis, the film has much of the feel of vintage Woody Allen. Well, not quite. I can’t remember Woody Allen ever getting anywhere near as preachy as Baumbach does by the end of this film. So Baumbach (The Squid and The Whale, Greenberg, the underrated Margot at the Wedding) may superbly reach Allen levels here but his movie unfortunately stalls just when it might have amped things up a notch.
Fresh with insight, Baumbach’s screenplay has a professor and aspiring 44-year-old filmmaker, Josh (Stiller) and his unfortunately miscarriage-prone wife Cornelia (Watts) fight the emerging ennui of watching their best friends and new parents (Maria Dizzia and Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz) change into baby-centric mode. Into the couple’s new void enters a student of Josh’s. It doesn’t take much for aspiring documentarian Jamie (Adam Driver) and his wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried) to ingratiate themselves into Josh’s world. Suddenly, Josh and Cornelia are not only admiring but also imitating their younger pals’ behavior, much to the bewilderment of their older, now not so best friends.
Like Baumbach’s previous film, Frances Ha, we’re both treated to and asked to endure the idea of adults refusing to grow up. Sure, a lot of this depends on just how plausible Jamie and Darby come across. Yet given Josh and Cornelia’s basically empty life, the bar is set somewhat lower. Thus, the occasionally cloying and mannered tics of Jamie
and Darby amount to mostly harmless good fun.
An odyssey the two couples go on with a shaman-directed mescaline trip is merely a mix of amusing and bland rather than the egregious nonsense it could easily have become in lesser hands. But when Josh explains how he and Darby took their wedding vows “in an empty water tower in Harlem” Baumbach is pushing the envelope. Likewise, when Jamie refuses to google anything because “it’s better to just not know.” Unlike Josh and Cornelia’s heavy reliance on technology, Jamie and Darby go the other way. Their huge vinyl record collection is testament to this. But does Baumbach really need to add on a VHS tape collection and a manual typewriter? Precious. And those are the good parts of the film.
When things quickly become more serious and Jamie is found to be not all that innocent, we’re suddenly thrust into a world of the ethics of documentary-making. Despite a sturdy performance by Charles Grodin as both Josh’s father-in-law and former mentor, While We’re Young gets old fast, devolving into two former buddies unwittingly competing on who is actually more bratty. Then comes the histrionic denouement smack dab in the middle of Lincoln Center. What had been much of the time sharp observation fades quickly into unsavory excess.
Stiller and Watts maintain the creative sheen, but Baumbach needs to brush up on his Allen.