For what's it worth, I truly believe in Gen X comedy-dramas. Even if you didn't fully enjoy this period in history, the quirky characters and realistic underlying problems of these films' central protagonists are shockingly familiar. Whether Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" or James Joyce's "The Dead"
every art form has beleaguered to show us that our futures, more likely our destinies, are under our own control and not that of extenuating circumstances. We all fear failure in the future, but Baumbach also delves into the psyches of several different archetypes, including: the infinite student, wanting to learn but lacking direction, the genius who works blue collar because he fears success, and the slacker who still slacks though staying in school so he doesn't have to face life. This film is one big denial trip down a memory lane no one wants to know or live through. Each of the main character's relationships are these hypereducated rants to one another over who can be more of a hipster chic intellectual, who can obsess over the idiosyncrasies and affectations of an entire generation of hypochondriacs and windbags, quite frankly. The film makes fun of itself often, and points out the flaws of the college elite, when the entire culmination of our hard earned education is wasted on people who lack direction, who serve themselves with things, and people, and ideas they don't need, lying about without hope or purpose. Some may not revel in the true entertainment of eccentricities, but the droll humor and actual message are worth the short watch.
September 24, 2011
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