I never trust anyone who says they wish they could go back and relive their college years. While it certainly could have been fun and liberating at the time, we tend to forget the awkward years that immediately follow.
At 22, most 19 year olds think you’re old and look at you as a curiosity. You realize that you spend too much of your time taking the required classes and not any that were actually interesting. The absolute rock bottom you can hit is drinking warm beer in a dorm room party while the radio plays nothing but reggae music. The best creative writing you can do is making the few life experiences you’ve had sound interesting on a resume. Wearing a pajama top under a sportcoat is no longer quirky but sad. And lastly, a job at a video store feels like a viable career option. (It isn’t, but it’s still a cool damn job.)
Kicking and Screaming reminds us just how terrible those years really were, only our years weren’t filled with so much wit.
When I first sat down to watch Kicking and Screaming I was certain it was a Whit Stillman film. Depending on your opinion of Stillman, that can either be seen as a plus or a minus, but it was easy for me to be confused. The majority of the cast are lily white early twenty somethings who don’t have much direction in their lives and one of them happens to be played by Stillman regular Chris Eigeman, so you can see how the mistake can be made. However the more I think about it the more I realize that twenty-somethings not making much out of their lives can actually describe 50% of the 1990’s film output. So why did I really confuse it?
Quite simply, it’s the words.
Long before he became hollywood/indie darling Noah Baumbach, chronicler of the angsty, neurotic, and frustrated population, we had first time director Noah Baumbach, whose first film just happened to be Kicking and Screaming. In the future Baumbach will get Oscar nominated for best screenplay twice, first for The Squid and the Whale and then for Marriage Story, which will also bring in a slew of nominations for pretty much all involved. But in this debut feature the talent is there to see.
But it’s not just Baumbach’s words that make the film worth watching. Joining him in his rookie outing is a who’s who cast of nineties indies actors including but not limited to Eric Stoltz, Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, and Olivia d’Abo. They are each wonderful in their roles and hit those emotional truths that many of us will recognize from that time in our lives, whether it’s the guilt of infidelity or a sense of directionlessness. We will want them to succeed and fail, depending on how well we relate to them, but they will certainly entertain us as they work through the problems we’ve all faced.
Baumbach would go on to make a few more underseen films before he hit it out of the park with The Squid and the Whale, but his debut certainly showcased the talent to come.
Rated 3.5 out of 5 Stars
