On paper this should be a no-brainer for me: four recent college grads bum around their old campus, hooking up with girls, bemoaning the pitfalls of getting older, obsessing over the one that got away, smoking cigarettes in dive bars, and having pointless conversations. It sounds like all the films that really became my personality: High Fidelity, Metropolitan, Singles, Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Before Sunrise, Dazed and Confused, The Daytrippers, The Last Days of Disco, Barcelona, Reality Bites. These are all films that feature characters who are intelligent beyond their years, but are not very wise. Note the dictation.
Something about Kicking & Screaming left me wanting more. It feels, to me, too preoccupied with the non-sequiter moments around the narrative. It feels a bit too concerned with getting jokes in there, over-telling the story. It was a nice hangout movie for sure, but every time we get pulled back in the direction of Grover's feelings for Jane, I kept wanting the film to commit. The idea of your college love moving to Prague without you felt rich with narrative possibilities. Instead, it's resorted to background noise to the non-sequiter scenes--Grover hooking up with a girl and not having a condom, his father coming to visit and offering his Greenwich Village apartment, etc. Even a character like Otis is good for a few laughs, but I didn't feel connected to him in a way that would make his final scene land with any emotion. I found myself saying, "Oh yeah, and then there's that guy."
As a film about the specific feeling post-graduation, I can feel the thrust (or the inert nature of feeling stuck). It does attempt to capture the feeling of wishing someone would hand you a guidebook to being an adult. That period of time is stressful because, for the first time in your life, really, you have autonomy. Some folks use that autonomy to fulfill a passion for a job, as Chet says. Be a vet or a filmmaker. Others, like Chet, chose to be lifelong students. His joke about how to make God laugh, by making a plan, has a funny melancholy to it. Because when you're someone like Grover, you yearn for the plan, the plan is your home, the plan is all you've got. And then suddenly there's no plan, and it's scary and... and... you know, I'm writing all this, and I'm not sure if I felt this in the movie or if I'm bringing it on my own. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure what Grover was so upset about, outside of losing Jane to Prague. Perhaps he's struggling with the inevitable feeling that his friends will leave, too. Like Otis in the end. Like Max and Kate getting their own house. Like Skippy walking away from the group because Max slept with Miami.
Maybe this is a film about people leaving. That no one really stays. It's a film that is wise in that way, even if the characters aren't, which all of those films I listed up there tend to be. That's what attracts me to them. Filmmakers like Linkater, Baumbach, Crowe, Stillman, Smith, and Stiller seemed to get something about getting older and shine the flashlight on their younger selves, almost as though they wished they could go back and tell themselves this lesson sooner.
I just wish the film had a bit more narrative thrust. That's really what it boils down to. Otherwise this is another great entry in the Gen-X slacker canon.
7.1/10
On paper this should be a no-brainer for me: four recent college grads bum around their old campus, hooking up with girls, bemoaning the pitfalls of getting older, obsessing over the one that got away, smoking cigarettes in dive bars, and having pointless conversations. It sounds like all the films that really became my personality: High Fidelity, Metropolitan, Singles, Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Before Sunrise, Dazed and Confused, The Daytrippers, The Last Days of Disco, Barcelona, Reality Bites. These are all films that feature characters who are intelligent beyond their years, but are not very wise. Note the dictation.
Something about Kicking & Screaming left me wanting more. It feels, to me, too preoccupied with the non-sequiter moments around the narrative. It feels a bit too concerned with getting jokes in there, over-telling the story. It was a nice hangout movie for sure, but every time we get pulled back in the direction of Grover's feelings for Jane, I kept wanting the film to commit. The idea of your college love moving to Prague without you felt rich with narrative possibilities. Instead, it's resorted to background noise to the non-sequiter scenes--Grover hooking up with a girl and not having a condom, his father coming to visit and offering his Greenwich Village apartment, etc. Even a character like Otis is good for a few laughs, but I didn't feel connected to him in a way that would make his final scene land with any emotion. I found myself saying, "Oh yeah, and then there's that guy."
As a film about the specific feeling post-graduation, I can feel the thrust (or the inert nature of feeling stuck). It does attempt to capture the feeling of wishing someone would hand you a guidebook to being an adult. That period of time is stressful because, for the first time in your life, really, you have autonomy. Some folks use that autonomy to fulfill a passion for a job, as Chet says. Be a vet or a filmmaker. Others, like Chet, chose to be lifelong students. His joke about how to make God laugh, by making a plan, has a funny melancholy to it. Because when you're someone like Grover, you yearn for the plan, the plan is your home, the plan is all you've got. And then suddenly there's no plan, and it's scary and... and... you know, I'm writing all this, and I'm not sure if I felt this in the movie or if I'm bringing it on my own. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure what Grover was so upset about, outside of losing Jane to Prague. Perhaps he's struggling with the inevitable feeling that his friends will leave, too. Like Otis in the end. Like Max and Kate getting their own house. Like Skippy walking away from the group because Max slept with Miami.
Maybe this is a film about people leaving. That no one really stays. It's a film that is wise in that way, even if the characters aren't, which all of those films I listed up there tend to be. That's what attracts me to them. Filmmakers like Linkater, Baumbach, Crowe, Stillman, Smith, and Stiller seemed to get something about getting older and shine the flashlight on their younger selves, almost as though they wished they could go back and tell themselves this lesson sooner.
I just wish the film had a bit more narrative thrust. That's really what it boils down to. Otherwise this is another great entry in the Gen-X slacker canon.
7.1/10
