Noah Baumbach’s self-confident latest, after his success with the charming and funny FRANCES HA, has an awful lot going for it. A highly appropriate quotation from Ibsen (about opening the door to ‘let the young in’) to kick things off, four star parts perfectly realised, an always-welcome appearance from Charles Grodin, funky New York locations and a theme that can’t fail to attract forty-something audiences who wish they were still twenty-something while dreading becoming fifty-something. So why might this targeted audience leave feeling dissatisfied and maybe even conned, the way Josh Srebnick (Ben Stiller) feels after the professional and emotional mangle Baumbach has put him through?

A film-maker in the same serious-minded vein as Woody Allen in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS, Josh has been working for the last ten years on a documentary exposing the American industrial-military complex. He’s amassed a hundred hours of material with the help of his (unpaid) editor but like Michael Douglas’s novelist Grady Tripp in WONDER BOYS, can’t complete the thing. Part of the problem is that Josh has a lot to live up to, as his father-in-law Leslie Breitbart (Grodin) is a legend among documentary-makers, and about to be given a Lifetime Achievement Award. And there’s more unfinished business at home, as Josh and his wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) haven’t totally given up on the idea of having a baby like the rest of their settled-down friends, though time is running out and they’re still in two minds anyway.

So when Josh and Cornelia meet ultra-cool couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) they grab them with both hands as a way of hanging onto their vanishing youth. Jamie aspires to make documentaries too and is apparently in awe of Josh’s work (now only available on YouTube). Darby makes her own ice-cream, when she and Josh aren’t walking along subway lines in the middle of the night, or cycling everywhere and generally leading a retro existence (vinyl, stereo system, 70s furniture, typewriter) that Josh and Cornelia jettisoned long ago.

 Josh realises that he and his protégé are players in a modern version of ALL ABOUT EVE…

In fact, the only non-retro thing about Jamie is the way he approaches his own Facebook-inspired documentary, which follows a ‘Before and After’ format as per the current fashion. Soon he’s roped in Cornelia as his assistant and Josh as his mentor, though before long Josh begins to question Jamie’s motives: letting Josh pick up the bill whenever they all eat together is a giveaway, and it doesn’t take Jamie’s extravagant ‘I’m not worthy’ gestures to convince us that he’s a bit of a prick, as opposed to Josh who doesn’t need to wear an unsuitable hat in imitation of Jamie to convince us that he’s a bit of a jerk.
So far, so enjoyable; and WHILE WE’RE YOUNG has plenty of fun with its generation-gap observations and social embarrassment in scenes with Josh and Cornelia’s friends from their life ‘Before’ Jamie and Darby – though a set-piece when the foursome attends a nightmarish drug and vomit-fuelled therapy session forgoes comedy for broad if not crude satire, which rather betrays Noah Baumbach’s age. And once Josh realises that he and his protégé are players in a modern version of ALL ABOUT EVE, Baumbach starts laying on his author’s message with a trowel; the film’s overwritten climax is set at the awards ceremony where the major characters get to Have Their Say. Unfortunately, Josh’s complicated tirade against dishonesty in film-making is less accessible than (for example) the revelation in BROADCAST NEWS of media manipulation, and it isn’t helped by Josh’s persona up to this point – after all, he is a bit of a jerk.

Added to this is a frankly sentimental ending (at an airport, obviously) when Josh and Cornelia have recognised their priorities and seem to be looking forward to a responsible middle-age, and not back to the world of Jamie’s superficial ambitions. But even this is undercut by the last shot where Josh and Cornelia are confronted by a living symbol of what the future holds. A neat nod to THE GRADUATE, perhaps, but also another example of Noah Baumbach wanting to have his cake and eat it too.

httpvh://youtu.be/v726Dufa3IU