WHILE WE'RE YOUNG

Starring: Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver
Writer: Noah Baumbach
Director: Noah Baumbach

Fortysomething documentary film maker Josh (Stiller) and his wife Cornelia (Watts) find their lives changed after meeting twentysomething couple Jamie and Darby (Driver and Amanda Seyfried, replacing original casting choice - and Baumbach's partner - Greta Gerwig). Jamie is also looking to make his mark in the world of documentaries and he's a big fan of Josh's work, or at least the one piece of his work that he managed to get hold of on videotape via Ebay. Darby, meanwhile, is a manufacturer of artisan ice-creams with odd flavours. After being initially reluctant to step across this generational gap, Josh and Cornelia suddenly find themselves at beach street parties, hip-hop dance classes and mystical cleansing ceremonies. Can Josh cope with all of this as his eyesight fails and his arthritis kicks in?

Noah Baumbach's film is an extremely enjoyable peek into the hopes and dreams of different generations. It's about growing up (even when you're convinced that you haven't), it's about trying to recapture lost youth, it's about thwarted ambition, it's about the need to feel valued, it's about people evaluating what they really want from life, it's about how a marriage evolves and much more besides. All these themes are dealt with in an assured, naturalistic way, the script is full of lovely touches and the performances are fabulous.

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are totally convincing as a married couple, you forget the actors instantly and you see the characters. As good as Ben Stiller is in more mainstream movies there's a tendency for me to overlook the fact that he's a really, really good actor and here he plays both comedy and drama adeptly. Naomi Watts could read the telephone directory and still be fascinating, Adam Driver manages to bring out both the disarming and infuriatingly hip sides of his character and it's only Amanda Seyfried who I feel is a bit short-changed in a role that doesn't really have the depth of the others. Don't get me wrong, she's very good but Darby isn't given much of an arc. And hold on, who's that playing Fletcher, long-time friend of Josh and Cornelia's, new dad and pillar of middle-class respectability? That wouldn't be ex-Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, would it? Yes, it would. Terrific casting there.

The film is shot with confidence and there are many stand-out sequences. In particular, there's a lovely montage which compares and contrasts the lives of Josh and Cornelia with those of Jamie and Darby. Surprisingly, it's the fortysomething couple who are reliant on technology whilst the twentysomethings are the ones going "old school" - Stiller's character taps away at a laptop, Driver's uses a typewriter. Watts reads from a tablet, Seyfried reads from a book. The older couple search for things to watch on Netflix whilst the younger couple are watching an old VHS tape of The Howling (good choice, by the way).

The comedy here is much more straightforward than I'm used to with Baumbach's earlier work, it's even quite broad in places and the cleansing ceremony is, to my mind, almost an indie version of a Farrelly brothers gross-out set-piece. Baumbach hasn't ditched his trademark quirkiness but the themes and situations are ones with which a lot more people will identify than, say, those in something like Frances Ha (personally I loved Frances Ha but I can understand why it would leave other people cold). The scene in which Stiller discusses his arthritic knees with his doctor is a highlight, the doctor puncturing his patient's denial of the diagnosis with withering, hilarious, deadpan responses.

Of course, being a Noah Baumbach movie, there's also room for a helping of drama alongside the chuckles and this is worked into the proceedings in a pleasingly organic way. Why shouldn't there be amusing and sad moments in the same scene? Isn't that how real life is? When events come to a head and the characters clash things don't always go the way that they would in most other movies, there are much more realistic and honest conclusions. Okay, there's the odd familiar plot development but for all of his willingness to put a different spin on a conventional tale Baumbach doesn't fall into the trap of pulling the story in directions that it just wouldn't go and sacrificing believability.

So, in short, see While We're Young while you're young. Or while you're not so young. Me, I'm off to find myself a twentysomething film review blogger...