Everybody Wants Some!!
A very well-observed study of aggression, competitiveness, friendship, and “maleness.”
True story: The night before I was to review Everybody Wants Some!!, the new film from Richard Linklater, I had a dream that I met him. Given the opportunity to tell the director how much I admired his work, that I think that Boyhood is one of the most extraordinary films ever made, and that I think that Dazed and Confused is a defining work of indie cinema (all true, by the way), I instead told him that I loved the way he’d transferred the work of Alan Bennett from the stage to the big screen, and waxed admiringly about The Madness of King George, The History Boys, and Lady in the Van. I then partially roused from my slumber, only to realise that I’d got him mixed up with Nicholas Hytner.
“Hang on, though,” I thought to myself, both slightly embarrassed and hypnogogically lucid, “the films of Richard Linklater ARE a bit like those of Bennett/Hytner, in that they both reveal subtle and unique nuances of the cultures in which they are set through astute observation and intelligently crafted dialogue.” I was pretty certain that I could redeem myself with Linklater by sharing this insight with him, so I endeavoured to return to the dream, which I did, but Linklater was gone, replaced by my girlfriend telling me that she wanted Kit Harrington to suck her tits. Consequently, I went the following evening to see Everybody Wants Some!! armed with an augmented appreciation of Linklater’s work and a vague wariness of the Night’s Watch.
So, Everybody Wants Some!! recounts the weekend before start-of-term 1980 at a Texas college, focusing on the disparate members of a largely scholarship-enabled baseball team, many of whom are freshmen meeting their teammates for the first time. They banter hilariously, smoke weed copiously, and attempt to copulate with girls (the “some!!” of the title) with varying degrees of success. Parties are attended, friendships are made, and casual rivalries are formed.
The upshot is an insider’s look at what happens when you put a pack of Alpha Males with throbbing great libidos in forced proximity. Their loyalty to “the Team,” though, prevents any outright aggression, so their innate competitiveness manifests beneath the surface, directing their interactions rather than defining them, and the result is both hilarious and revealing.
In many ways, Everybody Wants Some!! is a companion piece to Linklater’s aforementioned 1993 indie masterpiece Dazed and Confused; both are set in Texas, both concern a similar era (1980 and 1976, respectively), and while Everybody… looks at the beginning of a school year, Dazed… shows the end of one. The films are very similar in tone, too, and both rely heavily on well-chosen soundtracks to authenticate their settings.
Another similarity Everybody… has with Dazed… is that, well, “not a lot happens.” There’s no massive drama, no one dies, no explosions, just a bunch of guys shooting the shit and trying to get laid. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds, though, mainly due to the brilliant ensemble cast’s spirited handling of some truly great, and often laugh-out-loud funny, dialogue.
Everybody Wants Some!! succeeds because, like a lot of Linklater’s films, it’s not quite the film it appears to be on first glance. It may come on like a standard jocks-trying-to-score-poontang comedy, but, while you’re revelling in the snappy banter, what subtly unfolds is a very well-observed study of aggression, competitiveness, friendship, and “maleness.”
A bit like the films of Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett, really.
