While We're Young

While Adam Driver plays Jamie, the young blowhard well enough, Josh needed an actor who can infuse his being with cruelty, envy and contempt but then render these vices entirely human. Unfortunately, Ben Stiller plays him with a cocksureness that strips away the confusion his character is mired in and makes him appear like a glorious party-pooper, nothing else.

...works at many levels — it is at once a humorous jab at our varied obsessions, be it with technology, or with keeping up, or with wanting to stay young. It's also — like that column written by Cheryl Strayed — a look at youth and all its charm and promise and pretensions. It's a look at the things we get to know only when we're no longer so terribly young: That "about eight of the 10 things you have decided about yourself will over time prove to be false". And that the other two "will prove to be so true that you'll look back in 20 years and howl".

Overall, the film is amusing and will appeal to an older audience with a bohemian attitude who is willing to learn and unlearn about life.

There's a sharpness here, allied with a lightness of touch, that recalls recent Woody Allen. Though Baumbach has always doffed his hat to Woody, it's difficult to imagine the old master doing better with the same material.

Baumbach is a thoughtful filmmaker, his cast is stellar and Ben Stiller( who starred in Baumbach's Greenberg) is endearing as usual.