Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Naomi Watts, Ben Stiller, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, Maria Dizzia, Adam Horovitz, Matthew Maher, Bonnie Kaufman, Hector Otero, Deborah Eisenberg, Dree Hemingway, Matthew Shear.

One of the biggest problems with humanity is that nothing is truly unique anymore. Our voices are confined with a masking obscurity of soundbites and instant quotes, our actions governed by what has gone before and if by chance something truly exclusive and distinctive is said, it gets tarnished within hours on social media and copied world-wide. In a world where seven billion people inhabit every available bit of land and conscious, to be the one outstanding adult is pretty much impossible, the optimism of this is to only be felt While We’re Young.

Uniqueness is the question in everything, the voice yearns to be heard and offer a certain insight into the world, a perspective so intense than it gets solely attributed to the one person on the credits, not shared as if taken for granted by a parasite claiming their speck of blood of a noble and pure creature

Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young offers that insight through the perspective of what was once considered the start of Middle Age, the jaded feel of hitting your mid-forties knowing that all you still believe you can accomplish, your final grand design to leave as a reminder to the world that you once existed, is governed by the annoyance of failing eye-sight, joints that don’t want to work in the same way as they did when being in your mid-twenties was to relish spanking the world with a paddle of idealism and with that much needed optimism grounded by the sheer reality, that for many, the relationship between the generations is one built on perceived respect but reverse plunder.

Offered to the cinema going public as a comedy, for it certainly has many truthful elements of natural humour nestled within in it, While We’re Young perhaps should be seen more as a admission of the gap between generations and how what was seen as the last moral standpoint for one, can be turned round within twenty years within the idea of a filmed documentary.

Whatever you may have made of Ben Stiller in the past, his casting as Josh, a man whose life has become stilled and stagnant without him realising in While We’re Young is almost perfect, the reflection of betrayal cascading from his eyes in a way that can be seen fully and without shame, is perhaps his most honest performance in front of camera and it is to be celebrated. Much of this comes from the addition of the tremendous Naomi Watts as his wife Cornelia and the young couple who have sneaked into their lives, Adam Driver’s ambitious but almost repellent like Jamie and Amanda Seyfried giving a good account of her talent as Darby.

With some very well played out scenes between the four actors which all generations can appreciate, it is a film, which whilst asking for thought and perspective of friendships across the generation divide and just who is gaining the most from being in a slightly misaligned setting, which does sit well with prospect and narrative of how some people fight against the natural pull of age and ageing.

A good film in which to reflect on just how your life can be turned round or upside down by opening up to the next generation! Enjoyable, very agreeable and one that asks many pertinent questions without the crassness of shoving the obvious down your throat.

Ian D. Hall