**Spoiler Alert**
Director: Richard Linklater/Starring: Blake Jenner, Justin Street, Tyler Hoechlin, Wyatt Russell, Glen Powell, Temple Baker, J. Quinton Johnson, Will Britain and Zoey Deutch
Everybody Wants Some is one of those films that receives little help from its trailer, which doesn't sell the film very well. After watching the preview, I'm sure I'm wasn't alone in thinking Richard Linklater's latest bears too-great a resemblance to his film Dazed and Confused. The clothing styles are marginally different, as are the hair-styles but those superficial details are hardly an issue, for Linklater's new film is every bit the equal, if not the superior, to his earlier film. Both films have a fine ear and eye for period American culture and like its predecessor, the new film features an ensemble cast of relatively unknowns who could conceivably become household names. Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich and Parker Posey achieved varying degrees of fame in the wake of Dazed and Cofused's cult success.
Linklater is a master of dramatic time-compression (he is also the master of time elongation; as Boyhood convincingly attests). In films like Slacker and the Before Sunrise series, a day is as significant as a hundred years. In Everybody Wants Some, it's difficult to believe the story takes place in three days rather than a year. Between the time Linklater's main character Jake (Blake Jenner) arrives on-campus as a freshman baseball player and the final credits, the story feels like a lifetime, in a very good way. And like Dazed, Linklater allows his ensemble cast to drive his funny, sexy, quirky and unpredictable story; making us care about something as relatively mundane as a college baseball team.
Blake Jenner plays Jake, who has just arrived on campus for his freshmen year. Because the story takes place in 1980, we see him lug a box full of albums to his off-campus residence, which happens to be one of two houses the school has appropriated for the baseball team. Inside the house he searches for his roommate and in doing so he (and we) meet his fellow teammates, some of who not only regard his freshman status as a reason for mockery but his position as pitcher as a pretext for good-natured abuse. One of the elder teammates; McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin, who seems every bit the character he plays) actually wipes his hand after learning Jake is a pitcher while another; Jay (Juston Street) gives the freshman a little ribbing before allowing him to pass. As the camera follows Jake upstairs and through the house, we meet his other teammates, whose personalities often come attached to amusing idiosyncrasies. One oddball is Willoughby (Wyatt Russell); a hippie-ish pot-head who offers his theories on a variety of subjects, one of them being telepathy, which becomes part of a funny experiment he conducts later. Another is Niles; a wound-too-tight, self-professed philosopher who claims to have a 95 mile-an-hour fastball though no evidence of such an extraordinary claim exists.
As the freshman players become acquainted with the elder team members, they learn to kill time around the house drinking and amusing themselves in odd ways. One such way involves playing baseball with an axe, a talent for which McReynolds shows a particular deftness. Naturally competitive, other amusements lead to heated games of ping-pong, where an angry McReynolds hurls his paddle at Jake after a disappointing defeat.
Driving around with his new teammates after he arrives, they cruise around, scouting for girls. They happen upon two attractive female students, who give them the brush off though Jake draws the attention of a girl named Beverly (Zoey Deutch); which stirs his teammates' jealousy.
The evenings find the team looking for fun in the local bars, hooking up with women or in one case, hosting a party in their own house, where all the time-honored traditions of mayhem, beer-guzzling and sex proceed unimpeded. This flies in the face of their coach's proscription about women and alcohol on the premises.
In their constant search for parties and good times, the team finds themselves in places that bring them face to face with other social groups. After being bounced from their favorite watering hole, a country-western bar proves to be an adequate alternative. A stroll around the off-campus student housing leads to an encounter with punk-rockers, one of whom Jake happens to know from high school. And in pursuing Beverly; a dramatic arts major, Jake is invited to one of their parties. Seeing the obvious clash of baseball players and the drama/arts crowd, Jake reluctantly brings the team along to the party. The experience proves to be an eye-opening for the players, who encounter a dominatrix and a surreal gaggle of costumed party-goers. Bemused by the scene, the guys are chastised by Finnegan (Glen Powell); one of the team leaders, for talking baseball in the presence of creative people.
As the first day of school rapidly approaches, Jake and Beverly become an item and we finally see the team take the field for practice. During a scrimmage, Willoughby is summoned away ominously by the coach and doesn't return. In the days following, we learn the reason for his dismissal and something about his secret life, which leaves the team flabbergasted and puzzled.
The contradictions inherent in the inter-player dynamics are interesting. Though we see team camaraderie, the freshman discover the older teammates have a decidedly different perspective on their relationship with the younger players. As Dale (J. Quinton Johnson) explains to the freshman; Jake, Plummer (Temple Baker, who has the dumb jock character down pat), Brumley (Tanner Kalina) and Beuter (Will Brittain), the older players don't care about the freshman and wouldn't mind seeing them fail. Everyone is on their own.
When one reduces the film to its intrinsic components, the story is partly about the team's encounters with other campus sub-cultures. How the players manage to fit or not fit into the motley stew is one of the defining characteristics of college social life and the plot.
One reason Linklater's film works so well are colorful characters and how they interact as athletes and people. He has an exquisite ear for dude-talk and though they often sound like jocks, it is refreshing to find some players have more on their minds than sports. One player holds a copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and extols its virtues while later we see Finnegan reading a copy of Kerouac's Desolation Angels.
By the time Jake reaches class on his first day, we feel the players have been through a helluva a lot. The professor writes on the board "Frontiers are where you find them." The statement applies very much to Jake and what awaits him in school and baseball and serves as an appropriate coda to a terrific film.
The film is populated with mostly unknown actors but they make an impression: Glen Powell and Tyler Hoechlin are quite charismatic pair, as is Blake Jenner. Wyatt Russell lends kookiness to the story and some intellectual substance with his brainy patter.
Everybody Wants Some left me smiling; it is a very entertaining film. It observes a time and place with warmth and humor, without tripping over hackneyed nostalgia. Linklater continues to impress.
