Delayed Reaction: Kicking & Screaming

The Pitch: Reality Bites but more meandering.

A bunch of recent college graduates have no idea what to do next with their lives.

I remember what it was like to be a middle class, white, somewhat elitist recent college graduate with no direction, so I related to Kicking & Screaming well. This movie isn't for everyone, and it's fair to malign it for its specific and privileged point of view. With that understanding, I quite enjoyed it. This group of guys reminded me a lot of my friends, especially my college friends. We were pretty insular and tight-knit too. We had a lot of pointless conversations that we thought we profound at the time. My favorite detail of the movie was how often other people told them "You guys all talk alike". That sums up the whole movie. I graduated from college about a decade and a half later than Noah Baumbach but I recognized enough of this to appreciate it. I'm certain that if I graduated from college  in the mid-90s and saw it then, this would be one of my favorite films.

There's a lot of shades of Noah Baumbach. I'm not crazy about his writing collaborations with Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr. Fox). The Squid and the Whale grated against me. I've enjoyed his collaborations with Ben Stiller (Greenberg, The Meyerowitz Stories). He's best when he works with Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha, Mistress America), because, honestly, who can hate Greta Gerwig? Kicking & Screaming is easily identifiable as his debut film. It's undeniably myopic. Watching it is kind of like when a stand-up comedian is more concerned with making the other comedians laugh than the audience. The movie is directed right at the kind of faux-intellectuals who would blog about their thoughts on movies they watch. Think about it: if this movie was made in 2015, how many of those guys in the movie would've had a blog? The fact that no one used the word "zine" in this is kind of astonishing.

I'm hedging too much, I think. Kicking & Screaming has a lot of problems and a limited audience. I liked it though. Parker Posey, even in small doses is always nice. Chris Eigeman has never used his specific brand of pretentiousness better*. Carlos Jacott has some nice running gags. There's worse ways to spend 90  minutes.

*Granted, I still haven't seen Metropolitan.

Oh, and that mid-90s Lionsgate Film logo in the credits was bitchin'.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend