Richard Linklater’s films always make the viewer conscious of
time, whether it’s the years represented in Boyhood
or the hours that go by in Before
Sunrise. Everybody Wants Some details the weekend before the start of
semester for a group of college baseball players. Linklater has stated that he
considers the film to be the spiritual sequel to Boyhood but in tone and style it definitely reminds one of
Linklater’s 1993 comedic masterpiece Dazed
and Confused.
The film is quite light on plot but overall follows freshman
pitcher Jake as he interacts with his teammates and navigates his first college
weekend. It’s extremely heavy on the conversation and as expected for the
director (possibly the best writer of dialogue in current cinema?) the characters
go over ideas of varying magnitude which seem to be relevant on a universal
level. Sure, the characters aren’t discussing the biggest ideas in the world
but the philosophies somehow seem to be profound.
There’s no real story arc in the film. The characters don’t
come up against a huge obstacle to overcome nor do they learn deep insights
along the way. While it might seem meandering if that’s done wrong, in this
case it’s refreshing. The entire film seems like one fun rush of hanging out
with the guys. It’s an almost wholly male dominated film but perhaps by being
set in 1980 it seems to be less of an aggressive masculinity that’s channel and
more of a mellow and chill type. It’s an important feature because if the
characters were all entitled, misogynist stereotypes of athletes the film
wouldn’t work at all. So there can’t be enough praise for writing characters
that are multi-dimensional (and likeable).
Managing to fit a multitude of distinct and memorable
characters can easily overwhelm a film (or worse, the characters don’t manage
to be memorable) but the film finds the balance in putting the right amount of
each character in. From the smooth-talking Finn, aggressively talented
McReynolds to the team’s designated outcast Niles, who has a habit of going on
rants and treating everything way too seriously, there isn’t a single character
who doesn’t seem to fit into the film (even if several are trying to figure out
how to fit into the team). In fact, the characters and their antics are so much
of a draw that it’s almost the end of the film before there’s any baseball at
all. And even if there hadn’t been any, it’s unlikely anyone would have really
clamoured to see more baseball despite the guys talking about the sport fairly
regularly.
The fact that the film is set in 1980 definitely plays a big
role. It’s a decade that’s currently popular for nostalgia as Stranger Things and the Ghostbusters reboot have shown. Whether
the 1980s were a more hopeful time is probably a personal opinion but it does
seem written as this is so. Dale, the team’s only black player, never says a
single thing about his race and neither do any of his teammates. It’s all
written in the sense of acceptance. And, being the 1980s, music plays a huge
role in setting the scene and the soundtrack for this film may be one of the
best for the year.
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