Kicking and Screaming (1995)

I get it. The hook of this film for most people is that it's supposedly "realistic" - the film is focused on a bunch of university graduates not knowing what to do with their lives. Bah, there isn't an ounce of realism in this film - at least not coming from the very made-up characters. Sure, we all feel like we don't know what we're doing at one point or another in our lives, we all have moments where we aren't sure if we're happy or living the best way that we can - it's not a great feeling. However, this movie hardly does that feeling justice because the characters are so unbelievably thick, annoying, uninspired, pretentious, and un- relatable. I couldn't care less what the characters were going through as spoiled, rich (YES, RICH), white kids terrified of working or entering the real world. I am sick of stories where characters like these have their lack of suffering played off as something deeply troublesome and worth anyone's attention at all. They are well off! They are intelligent, but choose to waste their education! Ultimately, they are just cry-babies. I couldn't relate to any of them, found them all so incredibly irksome and pretentious, and there was absolutely no point to any of their narratives. They are just terrible characters. This film could have been better if it had drastically different characters. They are not realistic, completely unlikable, and shallow. There's no character development, there's no reason to root for any of them, and in the end, I just couldn't believe I put up with them for the whole runtime. I do not recommend the film.

Feeling unprepared for the 'real world', four recent college graduates spend their time philosophising and avoiding taking action in this feature film debut from Noah Baumbach. The film features witty, memorable dialogue left, right and centre as one friend reckons "I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur", while another comments "I feel like I'm being poisoned" if a bartender at a bar does not drink with him, and the list goes on. There is also some quite pointed in how unprepared the foursome are for the real world despite their extensive education, unleashed into the world like a baby not wanting to be born, as the title suggests. None of the characters are, however, particularly likable for all of their witticisms and at times thought-provoking conversations. The foursome actually come across as more lazy than scared or ill-prepared for post-college life, and none of them have especially vibrant personalities either. The brightest moments in the film are, in fact, had by Elliott Gould as the far too open father of the foursome, sharing his experiences with using condoms at his age and finding love post-marriage separation, much to the disgust of his son. The film does tap into something interesting though as the foursome come to realise that they feel "pressure ... to remain friends" post-graduation. This more than anything else captures how microcosmic college life is often considered to be and how different the actual world is. It's a different, inevitable phase of life involving a big transition indeed comparable to birth.

Sophsitication, wit, and charm abound in Noah Baumbach's directorial debut, Kicking and Screaming. It's a movie about life. It's a movie about love. It's a movie about growing up. It's not about growing up in the childhood sense, but growing up as in maturing into true adulthood, post schooling. Kicking and Screaming is an ensemble film about a group of friends who have just graduated college and are now forced to take the next steps in their lives as they emerge into the real world. Some of them cope better than others, but they all struggle to find meaning in a post scholastic existence where they aren't quite sure what will become of them. The film is a sort of stream of consciousness, almost rambling foray into adult life in which we must make something of ourselves. It is a smart film, it is a sophisticated film, but it's almost too smart for its own good.We learn a few key things from Kicking and Screaming. One. Noah Baumbach is a smart guy who knows how to write and has a keen sense of reality and what makes us human. Two. He may be too smart to make a coherent and entertaining story about human interaction and psychology. And three. Having so many things on one's plate is overwhelming and it causes a film to lose all sense of purpose. Baumbach tackles a lot of subjects with Kicking and Screaming, but they sort of all run into each other and get tangled up with one another that this film loses its direction starts to feel less and less like a film and more like an astute psychological study that lacks any real emotion.I feel like the characters in Kicking and Screaming aren't as much human as they are simply vehicles for Baumbach to exemplify offbeat quirks and complex relationships. He's created very diverse and very smart characters, but they don't connect on the emotional level that is necessary for this film to work. Baumbach obviously knows what he is doing with this film but he barely misses the mark, only by throwing in too many quirks and too many off kilter personality traits that turn these characters into test subjects instead of humans. That being said, I enjoyed this film for its intelligence and integrity, but the flaws are there and they hold back the film from being really great. Kicking and Screaming would make a great psychological research paper that detailed hypothetical situations and closely examined the human interaction in these situations but, as a film, it lacks the extra step that makes the art of cinema something more than a research paper can accomplish.You can't diss anybody in this film for what they accomplish. I have lots of respect for the keen awareness Noah Baumbach displays about life in this film. It is certainly a good film and it is smarter than the average dribble we see today, but it's far from perfect. It isn't something I would watch again, but I don't regret checking it out for its fascinating sophisticated qualities.

(I don't think I said anything that's considered a spoiler, but that warning scared me) I graduated from college and watched this movie just a couple of years after it came out, and I absolutely loved it then. In the 10 years since then, I re-watch it every now and then and its still my favorite movie.I can't think of another movie that captured in such a witty and creative way, the way people really converse and really feel about their lives and the decisions they make and situations they find themselves in.My favorite quotes: Chet: "Know how to make God laugh? ... Make a plan." Max (talking to himself): "Hi I'm Max" "Oh what do you do?" "Oh, I do nothing." Max: "This guy would rather be bow hunting. He'd ALREADY rather be bow hunting, and any additional aggravation..."