While We're Young

Ben Stiller spent years and millions on his Walter Mitty remake, a statement movie no one wanted to see. Director Noah Baumbach could've saved him the trouble—a dozen times over. While We're Young is a career-best for them both: generous, wise and consoling for those facing their forlorn 40s.

In outline, it's a Gen-X midlife-crisis: Filmmaker Josh (Stiller) and wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are stalled in careers and marriage. He can't complete his unwatchable opus (something on geopolitics and a Chomskyan scholar); they tried IVF, failed, and are settling into a childless rut. They need a shakeup, and it arrives with young Brooklyn couple: would-be documentarian Jamie (Adam Driver, from Girls) and wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried).

While We're Young sends cynical Josh into unexpected bromance, and much of the movie's charm lies in our being swept along, too. Jamie freshens his newfound mentor's perspective on film, revamps his wardrobe, and invites him into adventurous social circles. (One, with musician Dean Wareham presiding as a shaman, involves an ayahuasca ceremony and copious vomiting.) Cornelia, oppressed by the Park Slope mommy cult, starts taking hip-hop dance classes. Still, the female characters aren't so skillfully drawn as the males, who include gray-muzzled new father Fletcher (the Beastie Boys' Adam Horovitz), the only guy who can speak truth to Josh's blind infatuation. Charles Grodin also brings welcome, sour appeal as Josh's disapproving father-in-law.

Is Josh deluded and ridiculous? Of course, but that's not the movie's real source of laughter and inspiration. In denial about his fading eyesight, Josh will discover that being foolish and confounded is good for the system. If Jamie is a hustler, he's also like a personal trainer—pushing his client into discomfort. As the two collaborate on a doc about a PTSD war veteran and kids'-party clown, Jamie rejects Josh's purist ethics. Yet, more than a generational clash, this is a satire of an entire class of narcissists (the director perhaps included).

By the time Cornelia and Josh have woken from their spell, they've absorbed the movie's best gag and fundamental irony: Accepting that you're old takes no less imagination than pretending you're young. 

Critic's Grade: A-

SEE IT: While We're Young is rated R. It opens Friday at Cinema 21.

WWeek 2015