EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! With Richard Linklater’s latest, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!, I’ve never had more fun watching a film about guys I never would have hung out with in college. Set in 1980, on the brink of a new school year at an unnamed southeast Texas university, the film follows the exploits of the school’s winning baseball team—apparently the only winning sports team on campus—as a handful of freshmen recruits meet their upperclass counterparts in a pair of raggedy off-campus houses where the team lives like heathens but form a bro-chemistry that in undeniably appealing and hilarious.
Although Linklater himself has billed the film as a “spiritual sequel” to DAZED AND CONFUSED, this movie does less jumping around from group to group focuses primarily on the team’s exploits, which seem more ANIMAL HOUSE than BAD NEWS BEARS. We join the fray through the eyes of freshman Jake (Blake Jenner, in his first film after appearing most recently in “Glee” and “Supergirl”), a talented pitcher with a sensitive side that makes him one of the better-adjusted guys on the team. The houses are filled with a phenomenal array of college types, all filtered through the jockular filter. All of the actors are terrific, but there are few notable standout performances from Tyler Hoechlin as the uber-cocky McReynolds, who hates pitchers but seems to become an unofficial mentor to Jake; Will Brittain’s Billy Autry, Jake’s roommate with a hometown girlfriend and a nearly impenetrable Texas accent; and Wyatt Russell’s Willoughby, an epic stoner and spiritual leader of the team, who seems wise beyond his years for reason.
This being a Richard Linklater film, the details are what sells the ’80s period experience. It goes without saying that music isn’t just background noise in EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!; it’s a force that binds. And it being Texas, there’s a wondrous blend of music styles that the players find themselves surrounded by. At the house, they listen to “classic” rock from the decade before, but they also venture out to clubs where they dance to disco, dosey doe to country western, and even land up in a punk club, which scares a few of them. Hell, there’s an entire sequence near the beginning where a carful of these knuckleheads rap along to the Sugar Hill Gang. Linklater captures a series of turning points in the music of this era, and it makes those of us who were alive at the time a chance to get nostalgic and feel cutting edge (we weren’t, but it’s still a good feeling). Beyond the specific music choices, Linklater’s details extend into everything from girlie wall posters and pinball and early arcade games to classic cars, clothes and hairstyles.
EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! is also a bit of a love story, with the slightly more mature Jake falling for a bright young woman named Beverly (Zoey Deutch). It should come as no surprise that most of the players (including Jake) hook up with baseball groupies on their first night back to school, but Beverly makes an impression on Jake early on, and as he gets to know her over the course of the weekend, it’s clear he has feelings for her, which his teammates razz him about relentlessly.
As much as I love to keep intellectualizing Linklater’s choices as a filmmaker, his greatest contribution to EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! is letting the raunch run free. For better or worse (I vote Better), this movie is about dirty jokes, ruthless pranks, drinking to excess, and chasing ladies in ass-hugging shorts and tight t-shirts. There something of a science and an art to all of these vices, and on that level, the film most resembles what Linklater accomplished in DAZED AND CONFUSED. There is something about watching the psychological tormenting of these young freshman that goes beyond amusing and into the realm of the necessary. Perhaps we’re simply more tolerant of the bad behavior because it’s this director at the helm, but I don’t think that’s it. He understands this behavior as a right of passage, a gauntlet that young people must pass through to form lasting friendship and figure out how their adult lives advance beyond the teenage years.
Above all else, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! is funny, but that doesn’t stop it from daring to be contemplative, passionate about the era, and even sweet at times. I love it when a filmmaker sets out to do something with a specific work and not only achieves that goal but shows growth and maturity, even when profiling stupid behavior and immaturity at its finest. And coming on the heals of BOYHOOD and BEFORE MIDNIGHT, this film proves that Linklater is at his creative peak as a storyteller who has a complete grasp on the building blocks of youth and how that sets the foundation for what comes next.
