‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ Gets Lost in Misty Nostalgia

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – When the first strains of “My Sharona” by The Knack come out of the car speakers of a dude going to college in 1980, as “Everybody Wants Some!!” began, my do-you-remember-when sense tingled. The film’s story, unfortunately, could not match that feeling of nostalgia.

Written and directed by the great Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”) as a “spiritual sequel” to his cult masterwork, “Dazed and Confused” (1993), the new film has the same joy of youth that its predecessor had, but its episodic vignettes about a college baseball team bonding in their off-campus housing, on the first three days of college in Fall of 1980, doesn’t have the same cohesiveness and feeling of time/place. This could be due to the young cast having the impossible task of living a youth like their parents did, or Linklater’s inability to get some distance from his own nostalgia, but the movie in general has the era’s tone, but lacks the juice in the adventures of the boys.

A hot pitching prospect, Jake (Blake Jenner), is the guy coming to his new South Texas University baseball scholarship house, where all of his teammates will be living and bonding together. The team’s star is McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin), the upper classmate leader, and is joined by his cohorts Roeper (Ryan Guzman), Willoughby (Wyatt Russell) and Dale (J. Quinton Johnson).

Starting the Ride: Jake (Blake Jenner) and Dale (J. Quinton Johnson) in ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

There are weirdos like Jay (Juston Street) and outcasts like Beuter (Will Brittain), but for the most part the baseballers are a tight knit coterie, who fall into a series of parties over the weekend. Jake the freshman uses his good looks to score with Beverly (Zoey Deutsch), and gets into a whirlwind energy even before the semester begins. This joy could go into extra innings.


To keep everything shocking, here’s a spoiler alert. I was a college junior in the Fall of 1980, so I’m going to be a little more critical of how the era is presented, and it’s best to start right there. The major difference between “Dazed and Confused” and “Everybody Wants Some!!” is that the former film was made in the early 1990s, and much of its now-famous cast grew up in the 1970s – they knew the groove. The young cast of “Everything” (understandably) had no clue of the life, and it showed – the pretty boy actors couldn’t overcome the obvious fact that they didn’t understand the era.



And there is a much more nostalgic mistiness to Linklater’s approach in “Everybody” that wasn’t present in “Dazed,” and again I think it was because of the length of time between the real era and the film versions. A man looking back at college 35 years after it happened would be less inclined to be clear-eyed, and more inclined toward the romantic. The boys – at least the majority heroic ones – could virtually do no wrong, and that made the episodes out of balance and a tad misogynistic toward the woman characters. I know it was a boy’s story, but…


There are many positive elements. The goofy pleasantness of the actors provided a sense that they did bond as friends, and young boys still know how to express their testosterone as young boys will. The 1980 cars, clothes, music and off campus housing was letter perfect, as it was in “Dazed and Confused,” and as far as that part of the time capsule was concerned it was a thing of beauty.

The Cast Just Wanna Have Fun in ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

It will be interesting to see which actor breaks out from the film, much as Matthew McConaughy (all right all right) and Ben Affleck broke from “Dazed.” My prediction is the electrically good-looking Blake Jenner, who is up for the Han Solo prequel, but is also a triple threat (sing, dance and act) from the TV series “Glee.” Tyler Hoechlin also has quite a following…there are several fan sites on Twitter, and he also kind of owned every scene where he was the focus.

For this college ‘80s baby, there was vinyl and stereo sets and cars and cut off jean shorts and dreams of youth. In other times and other ways, that would have been enough – but alas – old age and cynicism is a bitch.

[16]	By PATRICK McDONALD [17] Writer, Editorial Coordinator HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com [16]