Movie review: ‘While We’re Young’

Few directors capture the spirit of contemporary New York City like director/writer Noah Baumbach. Perhaps not since Woody Allen in his Manhattan prime has there been someone so in touch with the city’s charms and foibles.

True, as with Allen, it’s a very particular part of NYC he portrays in such films as Frances Ha and The Squid and the Whale: middle-class, intellectual, white, prone to overestimating the importance of indie bands. Neither Staten Island nor South Bronx exist in this New York. But it’s the world he knows and he generally captures it with honesty and humor.

Now comes the endearing While We’re Young, and though it travels familiar territory, it’s Baumbach’s most accessible and commercial film yet. A sometimes poignant paean to struggling to age gracefully while time drags you kicking and screaming to the inevitable end, While We’re Young effectively balances wry comedy and bittersweet drama.

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are Josh and Cornelia, a mid-40s couple at a turning point. Josh, a documentary filmmaker and teacher, can’t seem to finish the film he has been working on for several years. Cornelia feels depressed after a miscarriage. The seeming blissful happiness of their best friends Fletcher (Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz) and Marina (Maria Dizzia), who’ve just had a baby, only underscores their emptiness.

So when 20-something part-time filmmaker and full-time hipster Jamie (Adam Driver) and his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) show up to audit Josh’s class, professing to be huge fans of his work, it’s just the ego boost Josh needs right now. He ends up inviting Jamie and Darby into his life and feeling younger as a result, even if it means adopting some of Jamie’s most annoying boho Brooklyn mannerisms, like wearing a fedora.

But Josh and Cornelia’s new friendship — which involves Josh even helping Jamie out on his first film — mystifies Fletcher and Marina, who feel their old friends are fruitlessly chasing the ephemera of youth. The resulting shifting dynamics among the couples provides While We’re Young with its bite.

All the performances are first-rate, with Stiller bringing a more subtle sensibility than many might expect from him, while Horovitz shows he is as capable in front of the camera as behind the mic.

But the surprising revelation is the cameo appearance from Ryan Serhant, known to reality-TV fans as one of the trio of obnoxious New York real-estate agents on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York, as Hedge Fund Dave. The scene where Josh meets with Hedge Fund Dave to get him interested in investing in his film is the most laugh-out-loud moment of the movie.

Baumbach stuffs his script with all sorts of smart pop-culture jokes. For example, there’s an entire New York-centric exchange about Cookie Puss — the Carvel Ice Cream creation of the ’70s — which just also happens to be the inspiration for the Beasties’ first single, Cooky Puss.

As it plays out, though, Baumbach does show off a certain cynicism about the millennial generation, invoking a bit of a “hey, kids, get off my lawn” sensibility. Jamie’s affection for all things retro — typewriters, VHS, bad ’70s/’80s rock — comes off as affectation, a slippery skin to shed once something else comes along. No doubt, it’s 45-year-old Baumbach not-so-subtly speaking through the rant Josh delivers near the film’s end.

It all ends with David Bowie’s Golden Years, a time that — if the film is to be believed — is not off in the promise of the future or the glories of the past, but in the here and now.

Exclusive: AMC NorthPark, Dallas; Landmark Magnolia, Dallas; Cinemark West Plano 20; opens wide across DFW on April 17

This story was originally published April 6, 2015 at 11:09 AM with the headline "Movie review: ‘While We’re Young’."