Humor keeps up pace in ‘Young’
When Josh Srebnick (Ben Stiller) lands in a doctor’s office after hurting his back while bike riding, he learns he has a strained muscle. But it’s the other diagnosis about his knee that stings.
Told he has arthritis, he is dumbfounded. “Arthritis arthritis?”
Yes, and the 44-year-old New Yorker needs eyeglasses, too, as he struggles to read the prescription he’s handed in Noah Baumbach’s invigorating, insightful, occasionally LOL comedy “While We’re Young.”
It’s about the divide between the once-young and the still-young, new parents and couples childless by choice or misfortune, and the way hipsters embrace the very cultural touchstones (vinyl records, movies on VHS, Polaroid film, actually trying to remember something rather than automatically looking it up) that Generation X discarded on its way to smartphones, iPads and Netflix.
Josh is a documentary maker who teaches a continuing education class, and that’s where he meets a 20something married couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Jamie is an aspiring filmmaker and fan of Josh’s work while Darby makes artisanal ice cream.
Josh and his wife, Cornelia (Naomi Watts), become friends with Jamie and Darby, and the Gen X-ers spend more time with the young people and their kooky, cool, spontaneous pursuits than with their old pals who are parents to a newborn. They are played by Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz and Maria Dizzia, nominated for a Tony for “In the Next Room.”
Friendship and collaboration on a project awaken rejuvenation for the middleage pair, but also raise questions that go to the heart of aging, truth-telling, self-absorption, ambition, admiration, whether doors slam shut on goals at a certain age and even if someone has the right to “take” a song if he likes it. And what about the idea of making a documentary in this age of social media, selfies and the ability to record everything with a device the size of your palm?
Mr. Stiller’s character has been working on his film for 10 years, which illuminates the differences between him and Jamie and between him and his father-in-law (Charles Grodin), a legendary documentarian with whom he has a contentious relationship. Their occupations may be rarefied but most workplaces and professions are split into the young people and the old people who don’t know when the trap door opened and they fell from one group to the next. Even “Saturday Night Live” has a “resident young person” who weighs in during its “Weekend Update” segments.
“While We’re Young” has one of those over-the-top scenes (vomiting and more vomiting!) but most of it is slyly observant and amusing and loops back to what or who is important. It’s a bit insular and precious with its New York creative class but aging is, if you’re lucky, universal and unavoidable.
Opens today at AMCLoews at the Waterfront and Manor in Squirrel Hill.