Movie Review: While We're Young Is Like Holding A Mirror To My Face

When I saw writer-director Noah Baumbach's name on this big cardboard advertisement of his new movie, While We're Young, two weeks ago in Trinoma's cinemas, I was pleasantly surprised and happy as well, that finally, one of his movies will be screened commercially here in Manila!  

I've been a fan of his work and two of my favorite movies of his - The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding - are not really your normal Hollywood studio movies since even though they're comedy-dramas - they talk about real life.

Noah is about my age so when I watched this movie, it was like he was holding a mirror to all the fortysomethings in the audience - the demographic he is writing this movie for.  I have my opinions about how it is to live in one's 40s and I really felt for this childless couple - played by Ben Stiller and the radiant Naomi Watts have to navigate all the "Why don't you have a kid yet" question and "We don't go anywhere anymore" comments which people my age grapple with.

I really enjoyed the first two -thirds of the movie as Stiller and Watts' characters meet and get to know this pair of twentysomethings played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried.  This is where all the fun and the cute observations about generational differences occur.  There is a bit of conflict in the movie but I feel it was handled awkwardly and unsatisfyingly towards the end.  

Interestingly though, Baumbach's observations and comments on today's generation may put today's twentysomethings on the defensive.