I presume Alejandro González Iñárritu was trying to make an artistic statement about the randomness of life by scrambling the timeline in “21 Grams” (2003), but it just didn’t work for me. Maybe it was punishment for my habit of trying to guess what’s going to happen next – it’s hard when next isn’t really next. Usually these kinds of movies sort themselves out and you can catch on. But in this unsatisfying rendition, where three families cross paths at a tragically metaphorical intersection, I was still stuck at the stoplight, blinker on, trying to figure out which way to turn.
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There’s this movie. A married couple’s having a wee bit of a midlife crisis. They meet this twentysomething couple. Hijinks. Absolutely. Do. Not. Ensue. Before you realize it, “While We’re Young” (2015) stops being a comedy (if it ever was one) and gets really weird (but not weird enough to be the good kind of weird). It’s trying to make a point – or 100 points – but it can’t focus enough to explain what the fuck it’s exactly talking about. And gee, it stars Ben Stiller, one of my favorites (cue sarcastic sound effect). Ya know, some hijinks woulda been OK.
On the verbal SAT of my life, plays are to movies as bell peppers are to ice cream. And I really dislike bell peppers. Me watching a movie about a play is like me having to eat bell pepper-flavored ice cream (think about that for a second). Micheal Keaton is a washed-up movie action hero trying to put on a Broadway show in “Birdman” (2014). The darkness is too dark, the acting is too acty and there is waaay too much camera time devoted to middle-aged men in tighty whiteys. Yep, them’s chunks of real bell peppers on that sundae.
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