Review

Everybody Wants Some!!

Dale (J. Quinton Johnson), Plummer (Temple Baker), Brumley (Tanner Kalina), Coma ( Forrest Vickery) and Nesbit (Austin Amelio, in back) are college baseball teammates in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!
Dale (J. Quinton Johnson), Plummer (Temple Baker), Brumley (Tanner Kalina), Coma ( Forrest Vickery) and Nesbit (Austin Amelio, in back) are college baseball teammates in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!

There is a telling scene about halfway through Richard Linklater's new film about a group of guys on a Texas college baseball team, circa 1980, on the eve of the new school year.

They spend a weekend together, in the school's special, off-campus athlete housing, messing with each other, drinking copiously, and espousing their views of the world in between bong hits and booze shots. One night, a group of them ends up at a punk club with the friend of a friend. Two of the players -- one, a philosophical freshman, the other a smooth-talking upperclassman -- discuss the nature of their sudden assimilations.

Everybody Wants Some!!

83 Cast: Will Brittain, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Blake Jenner, J. Quinton Johnson, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell

Director: Richard Linklater

Rating: R, for language throughout, sexual content, drug use and some nudity

Running time: 117 minutes

On previous nights, the freshman is saying, the group went to a disco, then a honky-tonk bar, now they find themselves outside a slam circle, and he finds it "phony." The upperclassman corrects him: They are only blending into their surroundings in order to best procure sexual companionship. They are there, in other words, solely in service to their loins.

At his best -- and keep in mind the director of Boyhood and the superb Before series has ascended some pretty rarefied heights in his career -- Linklater's films can be described as meandering, verbose, often sort of plotless, but never before has he made a film so surface-minded as this one. At times, it plays like a third-hand copy of Animal House. In others, it evokes some of the winding philosophizing of one of the Before films. Or it attempts to incorporate a range of college sects like his first film, Slacker. But never does it come to a cohesive whole. Pointlessness is an important element in a Linklater film, but this one never is able to make much of a purpose for itself.

We meet the team in rapid-fire fashion. Young Jake (Blake Jenner), the aforementioned freshman, pulls up with his crate of records to the baseball house, and quickly meets McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin), a gifted hitter who despises pitchers; Finnegan (Glen Powell), the smooth-talking upperclassman with a penchant for the ladies; Nesbit (Austin Amelio), a slightly neurotic upperclassman who tends to lose at most things; and Jake's roommate, Beuter (Will Brittain), a country bumpkin whom the rest of the team mercilessly teases.

Eventually, there's also the laid back Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), who may or may not even be a matriculated student; fellow freshmen Plummer (Temple Baker) and Brumley (Tanner Kalina); and a wild-eyed, fireball throwing transfer from Detroit named Jay Niles (Juston Street), who claims to hit 95 on the gun, and is constantly gripping a finger exerciser. The first night the team spends together, they hit a disco, get drunk and bring their female conquests back to the house for a night of wanton gallivanting. The rest of the weekend more or less flows in similar fashion, with the only break from the spring-break-like dirge being Jake's growing attraction to Beverly (Zoey Deutch), a theater major whom he meets on the first day, and who might actually last long enough to become a real girlfriend.

As far as narrative drive goes, that's about it. We get to see the team play exactly once, doing drills during a team-only practice on the Sunday. Otherwise, we watch them compete at silliness, drink from funnels, smoke enormous spliffs, and endlessly knock on each other.

We're used to seeing society's fringes in Linklater's movies, a cross-section of the weird and peculiar goings on just outside the fire-ring of standard society. He sneaks in some of these characters here and there -- a theater party on campus, where a dominatrix holds some team members transfixed, and a Dating Game re-enactment of Alice in Wonderland plays on the stage -- but for the most part, we're locked in with the jocular jocks, seeing the world from their squared-up perspective.

The two most Linklater-like characters -- Willoughby, a hirsute hippie pitcher with killer weed and a penchant for flip-flops; and Niles, the wound-up pitcher from Detroit who repeatedly talks up his fastball and "Raw Dog" nature in a way that suggests he's almost assuredly none of the things he claims -- are kept to the background, keeping the focus instead on the mainstream jocks, who are pretty much only interested in beating each other at every possible game (darts, pool, ping pong, et al.), and bedding as many girls as possible. Their shallowness reflects the film's lack of depth, even given Jake and Beverly's brief scenes of philosophical wanderings. It's Dazed & Confused, but from the point of view of the kids who already have it all.

Those hoping for a follow-up to the deeply felt Boyhood will likely leave disappointed. I don't begrudge a director making a more lighthearted film, especially an artist with Linklater's voracious appetite for exploration, but it's hard to get away from the idea that this film stays at kiddie-pool depth to its detriment. It might want to play like Animal House, but it's far too laid back to work terribly hard for your laughter. Apart from everything else, about the only female character to be given more than a cursory (crude) glance, or given more than a single line of dialogue, is Beverly, and even she seems painfully underwritten. It's as if Linklater wanted to make a film that hearkened back to the glorious days of being a college meathead. In this, I suppose you'd have to say he succeeds, but it's a distinctly dubious honor.

MovieStyle on 04/29/2016

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