Post by StevePulaski on Nov 20, 2015 0:01:14 GMT -5
Kicking and Screaming (1995)
Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Josh Hamilton and Olivia d'Abo.
Rating: ★★★
Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Josh Hamilton and Olivia d'Abo.
Rating: ★★★
Noah Baumbach does a similar thing with Kicking and Screaming that Amy Heckerling did with her film Clueless of the same year, and that provide the people from high school/college that we loathed seeing every day with some semblance of identification and humanity to make them into people. The people in Kicking and Screaming may indeed be satirized and heavily romanticized versions of people you'd encounter on a liberal arts campus on any given day - and for me, currently attending a liberal arts school, this one hit a bit too close to home - but their commonalities with their real life counterparts that you can't deny the satirical dial isn't turned up all the way past human recognition.
The people in Kicking and Screaming are the type of people to put a sign on a pile of broken glass in their apartment identifying it as such rather than sweeping it up. They are the type of people who fear that their whole schedule will be thrown off irreparably when they move to Milwaukee, which poses a one hour time difference from their current location. They are the type of people to play impromptu games involving how many films involving monkeys they can name on the dime, as well as being the person to name all the Friday the 13th films the fastest with no assistance. Finally, they are the kind of people who think they're the only people going through the kind of quarter-life/millennial identity crisis they are currently experiencing, and as such, feel better holding long conversations about living at home, getting drunk, masturbating, and repeating said events day-in and day-out until an opportunity's knocks are deafening or ambition hits them like a good buzz.
We focus on four college pals: Grover (Josh Hamilton), who breaks up with his girlfriend in the opening scene of the film when she reveals that she'll be bound for Prague in a few days, Max (Chris Eigeman), who often insights the ridiculous, aforementioned games, Otis (Carlos Jacott), who proclaims to only have two emotions, antsy and testy, and Skippy (Jason Wiles), who finds himself in that awkward stage with Miami (Parker Posey) between hooking up and going steady. After graduating, instead of moving on to bigger and better things, as many college graduates do, the four comrades remain on campus, happily indulging in the same food they condemned having to eat for the past four years and slumming around campus through endless nights of drinking and conversing about everything and nothing.
The rapid-fire wit in Kicking and Screaming is probably the film's most laudable feature. Noah Baumbach has predicated a film, not so much on realistic conversation being that characters can often expunge a paragraph worth of ideas and ramblings without even breaking a sweat or stammering over their words, but on humorous and eminently quotable film that releases the confusing and often unorthodox mind of a young adult. Misery loves company and the reason Kicking and Screaming seems to resonate is its ability to speak the language most millennials understand and speak themselves - it's the language of anti-jokes and endless quirkiness in a manner that, initially seems condescending to outsiders, but is part of the broader comedy/joke culture instilled in the youth of today.
While we can reflect on the time when many of us didn't know where or what the hell we'd be, despite everyone, from friends to family, asking us that same question and our parents asking us when all that hard-earned money they spent was going to pay off, Kicking and Screaming plays it largely for laughs and the situational absurdity it deservedly earns. Despite this momentary bout of disillusionment and listlessness on part of a few wealthy, privileged white kids - who have spent their entire lives learning how to take and pass tests and quizzes and filling in bubbles on a Scantron - who are realizing their real world skills are crippled by a lack of know-how and ambition. As a result, when every option you can conjure seems either frighteningly far out of your comfort zone, irrational, or downright implausible, what else is there to do besides sit, drink, and contemplate.
Kicking and Screaming is a film that pretty much showcases everything wrong, right, obtuse, and special about millennials in a way that uses all the devices they respond to - patronizing humor, sarcasm, and long conversations about absolutely nothing. While it can satirize them, it is not derogatory or mean-spirited towards them. The concluding monologue by Grover in front of an airport customs official has our main character stating how he wanted to do something daring with his life when he was young, while he still could and not be bound to family, finances, and immediate commitments. Those same words were probably coming out of the mouth of Noah Baumbach, who was twenty-five at the time of directing and co-writing (with Oliver Berkman) Kicking and Screaming. The encompassing moral is to leave them with doubt and keep surprising them - or, at the very least, keep talking.
Starring: John Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, Carlos Jacott, Jason Wiles, and Parker Posey. Directed by: Noah Baumbach.