5/10

Writer and Director, Noah Baumbach crafts his newest tale as an on-screen experiment between two couples in two different age brackets. ‘While We’re Young’ stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as Josh and Cornelia, a childless New York married couple in their mid-forties. As their other friends all start having children, the couple gravitates toward a young hipster couple named Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Jamie is an aspiring documentary filmmaker, a vocation Josh already has. Soon the older couple begins enjoying the energy they feel haging out with the younger generation, but eventually Josh begins to suspect his new best friend might not be as straightforward and trustworthy as he thought. What can you say about a film in which five audience members abruptly walked out of? I can understand what Baumbach was going for, but it feels like his story takes a brutal wrong turn on the highway to brilliant social commentary. The movie has a nice dramedy feel going for it, and then changes it into this dry paranoia film about midway through. The first half of the film had these nice touches of honest comedy that merged successfully with the awkwardness of meeting people who live a completely opposite lifestyle from our two protagonists. The cast is enjoyable enough, but i don’t think Stiller was cast right for this movie. While he is in his late forties, i don’t buy him as someone whose traits reflect someone in this particular role. Driver’s stock continues to rise, but it’s a shame that this film does a disservice to him and young people alike. The film does no favors to the young generation, calling them unoriginal, and too reliant on technology. I thought the movie worked best when it was communicating the ladder, while offering these four people as equals in the morals department. It doesn’t experiment enough with what both sides can learn from the other, and it’s commentary feels like an idea that was abandoned for an edgier concept that would keep the audience on the edge of their seats. By the end of the film, all of the characters we have built all have done these unlikable deeds that they may be able to redeem themselves by the movie’s standards, but the audience will feel like they have wasted 89 precious minutes on snobbish New Yorkers that does nothing to help their stereotype. The look and feel of the movie reminded me a lot of a modern-day Woody Allen films. Baumbach clearly has great ideas in his films, but i worry that he lacks the patience to make his audience relate. With a better second half, this movie had solid indy buzz written all over it, but i can’t recommend this dry pacing to anyone. ‘While We’re Young’ has some good ingredients, but together they are never aged to perfection.