God help any 22 year olds out there! This movie really begs the question - what if every guy was just Ted Mosby?
I think this one hits so hard because like so many others, as well as the characters of this film, I was also a piece of shit college grad floating around my college town, partying too much, working dead end jobs or subsisting/mooching off of others to survive, waiting for life to really start.
Those memories are so bitter sweet, thinking of how terrified but optimistic I was about a life I couldn’t even imagine, and seeing the same trepidation and naivety in these characters was both heartwarming and breaking. In characters like Otis or Skippy, we get to see them grow beyond their limitations within this group of man children towards self-realization and empowerment, while Max, Chet(?) and Grover all circle the drain in their own ways, letting life happen to them and creating affectations that become habits.
Women are vilified and misunderstood to the point of parody, but it’s clear that there’s still so much more to their psychology than the men in the film are ready to grasp. The Jane stuff is really interesting, especially juxtaposed with Grover’s present and his mental state because of the circumstances. I haven’t been there necessarily, but I have in the way that Grover has BEEN to Prague. Grover never fully wins me over, but by reliving his relationship with Jane through flashback, I can at least see the basis for their connection that he would be so devastated to lose, and he becomes 5% more human.
This movie will live on for me as a lab-distilled version of what it means to truly just float in free fall after graduation, and the shared desperation of everyone going through the same shared experience reassures me that I was/am not the only one thrashing against the mundanity of entering adulthood, looking back at versions of myself and wondering if it will get better than that or if it was actually a complete joke that I should be happy to move past.
Fully recommend, if only for the soundtrack!
God help any 22 year olds out there! This movie really begs the question - what if every guy was just Ted Mosby?
I think this one hits so hard because like so many others, as well as the characters of this film, I was also a piece of shit college grad floating around my college town, partying too much, working dead end jobs or subsisting/mooching off of others to survive, waiting for life to really start.
Those memories are so bitter sweet, thinking of how terrified but optimistic I was about a life I couldn’t even imagine, and seeing the same trepidation and naivety in these characters was both heartwarming and breaking. In characters like Otis or Skippy, we get to see them grow beyond their limitations within this group of man children towards self-realization and empowerment, while Max, Chet(?) and Grover all circle the drain in their own ways, letting life happen to them and creating affectations that become habits.
Women are vilified and misunderstood to the point of parody, but it’s clear that there’s still so much more to their psychology than the men in the film are ready to grasp. The Jane stuff is really interesting, especially juxtaposed with Grover’s present and his mental state because of the circumstances. I haven’t been there necessarily, but I have in the way that Grover has BEEN to Prague. Grover never fully wins me over, but by reliving his relationship with Jane through flashback, I can at least see the basis for their connection that he would be so devastated to lose, and he becomes 5% more human.
This movie will live on for me as a lab-distilled version of what it means to truly just float in free fall after graduation, and the shared desperation of everyone going through the same shared experience reassures me that I was/am not the only one thrashing against the mundanity of entering adulthood, looking back at versions of myself and wondering if it will get better than that or if it was actually a complete joke that I should be happy to move past.
Fully recommend, if only for the soundtrack!
