Many of the films I’ve written about on this blog I’ve done
so because something about it is immediately familiar to me. Perhaps this is
why I don’t often choose to write about horror films or sci-fi films or fantasy
films. It’s not because I don’t like them, per se (although I am very picky
about the ones that I do like), but the movies I tend to hold the dearest are
the ones that remind me of people, places or times in my own life. I don’t
think that I necessarily set out to do that when choosing films that I want to
write about, but I also don’t think that it is entirely unintentional either. Growing
up, some of my favorite shit to do was sit around with friends smoking
cigarettes, discussing music, art, and pop culture under the influence of some
sort of stimulant. So naturally the films that I enjoyed the most back then -
those of Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, for instance - tended to be the
ones with copious amounts of dialogue. Noah Baumbach’s first film Kicking and Screaming (not to be
confused with the Will Ferrell soccer movie of the same name) is just such a
film.
Kicking and Screaming revolves around a
group of friends who have just graduated college and, unsure (or rather,
terrified) of what lies ahead, decide to hang around the campus an extra year. The
main storyline follows Grover (Josh Hamilton) whose girlfriend Jane (Olivia
D’Abo) has just dumped him and moved to Prague. Heartbroken, he seeks solace in
the company of his best friends Max (Chris Eigeman), Otis (Carlos Jacott) and
Skippy (Jason Wiles). The group spends hours at bars and parties, drinking and
talking about art, pop culture, and academics and generally avoiding facing
their impending futures.
I’ve tried
to turn people onto this movie a lot over the years. I’ve played it for friends
and significant others and even tried writing about it in school once or twice.
A common talking point that inevitably comes up, whether in conversation or in
reviews I’ve read, is that Kicking and
Screaming doesn’t really have a plot. On the one hand, there are those who
think that this is a detriment to the film, and it can’t be saved by the unique
script. Others say that the film’s aimlessness works for it, acting as a symbol
for the aimlessness of the characters and that the snappy dialogue just drives
it forward. I guess I agree with latter partially, but with one major caveat: I
don’t think that the film is plotless at all. I think that the idea of being
terrified to face the real world when the only world you’ve ever really known
as an adult is your academic pursuits is a very real dilemma. Each and every
one of the main characters deals with this problem differently, but the outcome
is the same for all. The aforementioned Grover reacts to his girlfriend’s news
of her opportunity in Prague not with pride and praise, but with disdain and
bitterness. He is angry that she is not going to live with him in Brooklyn as
they had planned and, almost in defiance of her success, doesn’t follow through
on his own pursuits, opting instead to stick around campus to waste time with
his friends where it’s “safe.”
Otis, who in the first scene of the
film, we are told “has two moods: testy and antsy,” gets all the way to the
airport, headed toward grad school in Milwaukee. Minutes later, he shows back
up at their house, announcing that he has deferred his enrollment to the
following year. No one tries to stop him or drive him back. In fact, it is
glossed over so quickly that it almost seems as though they were expecting it. As
we get to know Otis’ character, we realize that he stayed because he is
terrified of a world away from the only people who truly know him. No one knows
this feeling better than Max, whose tough, wise-ass exterior masks a real
vulnerability that often comes out when he is drinking. In one scene, an
intoxicated Max looks at himself in the mirror and actually says “you do
nothing. Max Belmont does nothing.” It’s such a tender scene I have trouble
watching it sometimes. I’ve been in that very situation more times than I can
remember. Finally, there’s Skippy, the least mature of the bunch. Skippy’s
girlfriend Miami, played by the amazing Parker Posey, has a year left of school
before she graduates. So rather than moving on, or even getting a job and
waiting for her to finish, Skippy re-enrolls in school, despite having
graduated. He is so scared of losing her that he feels re-enrolling is the only
way to keep her. At the same time, he uses her as an excuse to do exactly what
his friends have all decided to do: stick around and do nothing.
These are four very distinct ways
of dealing with the inevitable and I believe that I have employed them all to
postpone my own future from time to time. Perhaps that’s what drew me to this
film so quickly in the first place. When I first saw Kicking and Screaming, I was a senior in high school, just a few
years away from the crossroads at which the characters in the film find
themselves. Possibly even closer, considering in my hometown it was not
uncommon to skip college after high school and go straight into settling for a
shithole career of some sort. And in order to deal with my own
self-consciousness or self-doubt, I turned to the only things that made me feel
better: my friends. If you’ve ever felt unsure of the future or afraid to take
a risk, this just might be a film for you. And hey, at the very least there’s a
lot of really funny dialogue.
-
Jonathan Eagle
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