Everybody Wants Some

1.5 Stars (out of four)

13 years ago, Richard Linklater released Dazed and Confused, an incredible movie about high-school teens in the late 1970s waiting to grow up.  It wasn't so much of a drama as a love letter to growing up in the 70s and the universal angst of what it is to be a teen, excited, bored and waiting for your life to start, even though you know nothing of the way ahead.  It caught an innocence, a feeling of what it was to be young.

Everybody Wants Some is a sort of companion piece.  It follows a young college freshman on a baseball scholarship to a great baseball school for the first three days before school starts.  It takes place at the beginning of the 80s, at the death of disco, the birth of urban country, punk and the New Wave.  It follows the bonding of the rookies to the new team, and frankly, how great life is when you are the popular superstar on campus.

I reviewed Dazed and Confused and called it great art because it evoked a feeling.  As a child of the late 70s and 80s, it brought me back to that time in my life and opened a floodgate of great memories, which was what great art is supposed to do.  Since I wasn't a high schooler in the 70s, some of the message was lost on me, but it still brought back a warm feeling.  I had hoped Everybody Wants Some would have been the same type of experience as it was closer to my high school years, but sadly, lightning is captured in a bottle only once.  While it seems Linklater was trying to evoke that same nostalgic feeling again with this outing, it would only be nostalgic to people who were incredibly popular at the time.  It doesn't ring true as the experiences of a normal person as the guys in this film experience nothing but good times, adoration, non-stop partying and sex from several willing ladies. It comes across as a guy who is bragging about his exploits to make you feel small in comparison.  These guys are not relatable or admirable in any way, and I was really let down by the promise of a repeat experience from Linklater's last outing.  The best part of the movie was its soundtrack and that was about it.  Overall, a big disappointment.