What we have here is a bit of a Back to the Future job for writer/director Richard Linklater. It comes on the cinematic coat-tails of his highly acclaimed Boyhood, which took the 'coming of age' genre to the ultimate by spending 12 years following a boy's development from the age of six to 18. This one feels like a follow-up to his breakthrough movie, Dazed and Confused, although Linklater also insists it’s a sequel to Boyhood.
Well, it is his film. And it's a damn fine one, too.
Set in 1980, Everybody Wants Some!! follows the fortunes of Jake (Blake Jenner), a college freshman just out of high school. He's a promising pitcher and - as is the norm in US colleges - he moves into a house filled with other members of the college baseball team, and gets acquainted with several of his new teammates, including his redneck roommate Billy (Will Brittain).
As part of his initiation into the group, he joins Finnegan (Glen Powell), Roper (Ryan Guzman), Dale (Quinton Johnson), and Plummer (Temple Baker) cruising the campus by car, eyeing up female students.
Although their antics fail to impress, a girl called Beverly (Zoey Deutch) remarks that she likes Jake and refers to him as 'the quiet one in the back'. Enthused, he notes her apartment number, and we're off.
What follows is basically a bunch of young men living the college life over a lost weekend, but what would likely be a ho-hum tale about the cusp of adulthood is made hugely enjoyable as Linklater captures the period without wallowing in nostalgia.
Dealing with the past it's always easy to cast a superior tone, especially with regard to the fashions of the day, but Linklater doesn't take that lame approach and focuses on the perennial innocence of late youth. This film laughs with rather than at its characters. Empathy abounds.
In essence, Linklater's love letter to 1980 is a film that's great fun, has a glorious soundtrack – and Magnum-like moustaches galore. Go treat yourself.
