'Everybody Wants Some!!' Not In The Same League As 'Dazed'

The nostalgia is real in Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!!, which is being dubbed the "spiritual sequel" to the director's high school classic Dazed and Confused. At a glance, the films indeed look like siblings: Both are set in Linklater's beloved Texas, both explore the history of American culture via vintage fashion and killer soundtracks, and, on top of all that, they have that casual philosophical ease that's a staple of the director's work. But unlike the filmmaker's 1993 film, Everybody Wants Some!! doesn't quite make the cut on Linklater's greatest hits list.

The chief reason for this has to do with scope. Whereas Dazed and Confused followed several different groups of teenagers on the last day school in 1976, Everybody Wants Some!! only focuses on the antics of the college baseball team the weekend before classes start in the summer of 1980. While it's fun to effectively hang out with the team – and it's huge cast of baseball bros, helmed by freshmen pitcher Jake (Blake Jenner), mustachioed senior McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin) and the intellectual chick-magnet Finnegan (Glen Powell) -- the atmosphere is almost too comforting. After about an hour in, one realizes this entire movie is more or less just bro-ing out...and therein lies the problem. The film relies so heavily on the chemistry between the actors that when one tires of all the male bonding, the project loses its bravado.

Dazed and Confused, on the other hand, had a constant threat of violence or disaster. An uncomfortable undercurrent ran through the film, highlighting the thrill and menace of young people raging against authority. What Linklater tapped into there, among other things, was a rebellious coming-of-age dynamic, and nothing with that inherent sort of tension alights in Everybody Wants Some!! Instead, the college-focused film is all upside, a keg stand of optimism coupled with a hazy recommendation to "live in the moment." A less rose-tinted look back might have been more poignant, exciting and perhaps funnier.

Still, Linklater's signature cinematic grace does a lot for the on-screen sausagefest. To bear witness to the team's ultra masculine tribal life -- with them eviscerating each other with jokes, philosophizing about the cosmos and pick up strategies, going to disco bars, sleeping with a parade of nameless girls -- is pretty fun. (Fans of the male figure in tiny shorts and tight shirts will have even more fun). Yet, as the party weekend winds down, there's not much to hold on to. I kept waiting for the director of Boyhood and the Before series to hit me with something truly surprising, tender or remotely profound, but what came was all that was expected: The big men on campus inherit the kingdom of heaven.

Everybody Wants Some!! opens Friday at the Lagoon Cinema.