The divide between the young and the old has been around for a while, changing forms as the generations come and go. It’s nice when a filmmaker such as Noah Baumbach (he writes and directs this one, along with “Mistress America” coming out soon) decides to give us a snapshot of where we are in age relations at the moment. One that works, at least. His most recent effort, “While We’re Young,” is something worth watching.
The movie slides us into the story, and we don’t have to work to get to know the main characters. Josh (Ben Stiller, acting the same way he always does) is a middle-aged documentarian, trying to scrape up enough money to finish the film he’s working on. He’s married to Cornelia (Naomi Watts, love her in everything.) They both have agreed they don’t want kids. They’ve settled, passing the thought of whether they want anything more adventurous out of life.
Then they meet a couple, Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, respectively.) They’re twenty-somethings. Jamie’s looked up Josh’s obscure previous works and starts to talk about how he’s taken them as inspiration for his own movie-making career. The younger pair reaches out to the older to return the favor, and all of a sudden, they’re friends.
Josh and Cornelia uncover a whole new world, one where these kids keep old records and movies on tape, make their own ice cream for a living, and write the digital age off as a killjoy while trying to look for their own answers. The movie perfects its view of both age groups: the youth, unapologetically picking up perks without explanation, and the adults, overanalyzing everything in life that hasn’t yet earned their trust.
The movie, while it’s a comedy, asks some big questions. Can the veterans sync up with the newbies when they can’t move fast enough? Is success automatically revealed with experience? Is there a right age and one that’s wrong? I think the film makes a case against the last one. It shows that each has its flaws. We know one thing at the end of it: both revolve around opportunity. Jamie and Darby see opportunity as a continuation, the natural way to move, and they go along without anticipating what could arise. Josh and Cornelia look at possibility as a risk, and they’re reluctant to try anything before going over the pros and cons. They know they’re in control, but they never consider what harboring too much of that control is restricting them from. And it’s funny. When someone makes a comment on how one person taking their phone out at the table sets off a chain reaction, it’s a really “that’s-so-true” moment, both as social commentary and as a laugh.
The movie might get a little caught up in what it’s trying to teach sometimes. We wish we could see as much of Watts' character as we do Stillers'. By the way, he Stillers up some of the lines that otherwise pack a punch. But most of the time, his sweetness fits. When the imminent marriage troubles between Josh and Cornelia come toward the end, the scenes feel built up and natural, much like the rest of the film, which you'd expect to be the kind of drag that feeds you life lessons about accepting yourself without believing them. It hints at that, but not in excess. When Cornelia pushes Josh to approach their own relationship with that vibrancy their younger friends live and breathe, it’s the own movie challenging us to give it a shot. Take the opportunity the young would, save the thinking for the trip.
