Everybody Wants Some!! **** (2016, Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Ryan Guzman) – Movie Review

Blake Jenner stars as freshman Jake who joins a group of daft college baseball players enjoying the good life in the couple of days before term begins in Richard Linklater’s 1980-set college comedy. Linklater may be old now (he’s 55!) but, boy, does he remember what it was like to be young. It’s his special gift, and an extraordinary one, to remember and turn his recollections into world-class movie scripts.

Writer-director Linklater’s plotless comedy is very likeable, laid-back and amusing, a satisfyingly lightweight work that is a worthy successor and spiritual sequel to his Dazed and Confused (1993), though nowhere in the league of its predecessor Boyhood (2014). Its comedy is fun, but also feels real and truthful, thanks to Linklater’s gift for writing interesting, involving characters and decent dialogue. The performers are very fresh and exuberant, and a lot of profitable work has been put into conjuring up some of the dafter fashions and sounds of the era.

Charming and nostalgic, Everybody Wants Some!! is the antidote to the Animal House (1978) and Bad Neighbours (2014) style of films, completely lacking their raunchy, gross-out, bleary-eyed takes on student life. There’s some strong language and nautiness, but Linklater has a very rosy-eyed view of college time, as a special golden era in life that’s largely just a time for a series of carefree laughs. Make the most of it, he seems to say, for it won’t last very long.

Though the men are after the college girls, or at least say so a lot, the film has no sex or nudity. And, for a bunch of students charged up on testosterone and enjoying up-close-and-personal bromances, there’s not the slightest hint that any of this lot might be gay. They’re a simple, straight lot of guys, Linklater’s college ball players, though, apart from the toe-curlingly nice hero Jake, some of them are decidedly odd.

All of this reduces Linklater’s chances for any belly laughs, so he prefers to motor on character, situation, charm, warmth and nostalgia. This is a much harder route to go, and it’s greatly to Linklater’s credit that he can make it work so well as this. But then again, he has the help of the well-chosen performers.

And it is very well played by a most appealing ensemble of youngish actors, notably Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Ryan Guzman, Wyatt Russell, Glen Powell, Temple Baker, J Quinton Johnson, Juston Street and Will Brittain, most of them buried under silly moustaches, and all of them doing well to build quirky and appealing characters that gradually grow on you (like their moustaches on them). Jenner is a winning star on this form. Zoey Deutch is the only woman who has enough screen time to make a little impression as Beverly.