Write what you know. So goes the adage ingrained in countless creative writing students every semester, and so goes Kicking and Screaming for its creator.
This isn’t the Will Ferrell flop of the same name – this is Noah Baumbach’s first foray into writing and directing a feature film. In this impressive debut, Baumbach, who later achieved wider acclaim for his 2005 effort, The Squid and the Whale, writes about something he knows: writers.
It turns out, leaning on that old advice he likely received from his college professors was a good idea. He uses his crew of characters, half of them would-be best sellers and poet laureates, to highlight the peculiar panic of the postgraduate existence.
The characters are young men, barely men at all, struggling with what’s next. After nearly two decades of being students, the prospect of leaving their comfort zones is just too much to bear.
Baumbach is happy to let his characters flap in the wind of apathy. It’s something he clearly knows a thing or two about, given the clarity his writing shows.
The way the characters are crafted is surely the movie’s strongest element. Most people approaching or just past graduation will likely relate to the moods and sentiments reflected here.
Baumbach’s wit and snappy dialogue manage to treat these sullen post-grads with some grace while revealing their extreme vanity and self-centeredness at the same time.
It’s a tricky line to toe, but Baumbach has the skill to handle it. This generation, however cliché or unsympathetic it may be, faces upper-middle class problems based on their affluence and intelligence. Society instructed them to follow their passions first and foremost, and the existential turmoil depicted is the result.
Baumbach gets it, probably because that turmoil was once his own. The movie is also silly and trivial at times, but that’s what being 22 is like for a lot people.
The banalities of Kicking and Screaming ring just as true as the epiphanies. It’s an impressive feat for any movie, and even more so for one that’s so clearly from the mid-90s.
In places, it looks and feels like a first time outing — there are stray film school shots and over-written passages on occasion. But overall, the tone, depth and direction make this movie a far more worthwhile experience than watching Will Ferrell coach a kid’s soccer team.
— eric.graf@asu.edu
