| My rating | IMDb’s rating |
Rotten Tomatoes |
|||||
|
Acting |
Script | Directing | Average | Critics | Audience | Critics |
Audience |
|
8.5/10 |
8/10 | 8/10 | 8,15/10 | 76/100 | 7,1/10 | 85% | 65% |
Numbers obtained from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes on April 12, 2015.
“The grass is always greener” is an expression that can easily translate our feelings anytime we see someone else living the life we thought we would have. That feeling gets worse when we compare ourselves to people our own age. We have the tendency to feel like everybody else’s lives are more interesting. In “While we’re young” we learn that, maybe, other people’s lives are not that fascinating as we imagine them to be.
We meet Cornelia (Naomi Watts) and Josh (Ben Stiller), a middle-aged couple whose best friends just had a baby. They’ve tried to have children themselves, but failed, so they decided to have no children. Therefore, being around their friends with a new baby was not that appealing. Besides, they felt like all their friends would talk about was the new baby. So, one day, in Josh’s class, he meets a 25-year-old couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), whose lives seem much cooler: Jamie is a documentarian and Darby makes ice-cream. Their apartment is filled with VHS, vinyl albums, typewriter and all sort of things that, in an old person’s house would look awful but in their apartment looks “cool”.
Cornelia and Josh start hanging out with the young couple and start to copy their life-style: he starts to wear the same hats as Jamie and she goes to a hip-hop class with Derby, for example. They think the young couple lives the lives they were supposed to have lived. However, little by little, they realize that Jamie and Darby are not as perfect and happy as they initially thought. So, maybe, the grass is not that greener after all.
The movie has a lot of funny moments and great lines that will definitely relate to the audience. There is a moment when the four of them are trying to remember a word and Josh’s immediate reaction is to look for it using his smartphone. Jamie, however, stops him and says “Let’s just not know what it is”. That moment really caught my attention because using Google in our smartphones has become such a recurring tool that it feels odd “not knowing” what things are anymore.
Directed by Noah Baumbach, “While we’re young” is a smart comedy that leaves you thinking about your life a little bit when you exit the movie theater, and in a good way.
