EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! (2016) - MOVIE REVIEW

       There is a distinct formality found in some of the works authored by writer/director Richard Linklater, a somewhat “renegade” filmmaker that picked up a camera in late-1980s Texas and began to form what was to be known as the independent “new wave” of that era, including the likes of Gus Van Sant, Robert Rodriguez, and perhaps most notably, Quentin Tarantino. Linklater has been in the American film forefront for quite some time with art-house contemporaries such as Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), his Before trilogy (a triad of romance films that followed Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy nine years apart from 1995 to 2013), and most recently Boyhood, a partially non-narrative and certainly ambitious project that followed one character, Mason, over twelve years, to create what can be viewed as a cinematic time-travelling-treasure-trove.
       However, the director has a solid balance; he’s also directed the quirky Jack Black-starring School of Rock and Bernie, and the film that put him “on the map”, as it were, is the 1993 coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused, a film starring Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, and Jason London which follows a group of high-schoolers in one twenty-four hour period. His new film, Everybody Wants Some!!, is a “spiritual sequel” to Dazed, as it follows the days leading up to the first day of class for one college freshman and his baseball teammates/housemates. Many of Linklater’s projects, such as the aforementioned Boyhood, seek to capture a harmonious filmic gaze of the world around us, while his other films, ones which seem to entertain only, offer a similar glimpse; Everybody Wants Some!! is the most entertaining film of the year, and is very likely to maintain such title in December, but it is also a film that offers a soulful view of the camaraderie and jubilance that implants itself into this timeframe. 
       The success that this film is can be a testament to one thing in particular: there truly is a vibrancy from its characters, whom are some of the happiest and carefree gentlemen this side of the Mississippi. Everyone walking out of the theater has a favorite character, and those who went to college in the era the film portrays will almost certainly have a character that replicates one they knew, or even themselves. The film commences itself with “My Sharona” blasted out of the car of five of the characters, as they roll around campus making remarks about girls and their coming classes. It’s so monotonous, but Linklater’s veteran writing and casting turns a routine expository sequence into one of memory.
The film is unabashedly hilarious and upbeat, but it is also unexpectedly poignant (although with Linklater’s track record, he can alternate well). Through these strung-together sequences of mayhem we learn more about these fellows, and the way in which they communicate with one another. We don’t just learn who’s the smart one, the dumb one, the overly competitive, etc--such caricatures are tried and nowadays unrealistic. We observe instead how each tendency of each individual affects how they interact with one another (or lack thereof), and instead of becoming a tedious tribute to Animal House, the film reaches eons beyond it, and captures the grace of living with the freedom that these boys have.
       Everybody Wants Some!! is not one-sided, either; usually films of this manner flop, because they seem to be for the young demographic, who proceed to spit out the philosophical and heartfelt disaster like they do sunflower seeds at the ballgames Linklater’s characters play. Ladies and gentlemen, we have here the rare occasion wherein one with half a brain can scratch only the surface of this film and have a great experience, and a certified member of the intelligentsia can look deep in the core and also have a great experience. This film caters to everyone, I imagine, except for those who lack sympathy for profanity-slingers (because oh boy, there’s quite a few), or six-year-olds, because of said profanity slingers. I loved it, you will love it, as will everybody you know (unless they don’t like swear words, cannot stress that enough). When the film ended, as per the title (not really, but I do love my cringe-worthy wordplay), I wanted some more. I wanted to visit the world again, and I wanted to be one with the characters; it was too electric, too zany, too well-written, too flat-out fun to leave. I didn’t want to get up out of my seat, throw out my popcorn, and grant goodbye to this world, if only for a shimmering moment. And that’s what the cinema’s about, right?