Everybody Wants Some!! (Rhoades)

Front Row at the Movies

“Everybody Wants Some!!” Wants to Repeat History

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

My friend Karen worked on “Dazed and Confused,” director Richard Linklater’s paean to the ‘70s. She wasn’t impressed. Linklater was enthusiastic, but a novice filmmaker.

The plot: The adventures of high school and junior high students on the last day of school in May 1976.

The film starred a bunch of unknown young actors, among them Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Milla Jovovich, Parker Posey, Nicky Katt, and Renée Zellweger. Karen told me she didn’t expect much for the film or its young stars. 

However, in a Sight & Sound poll Quentin Tarantino listed it as the 10th Best Film of All Time. And Entertainment Weekly ranked it as the third best high school movie ever made.

So much for Karen’s opinion.

Linklater said his intent was to create an inverse John Hughes film: “The drama is so low-key,” he noted. “I don’t remember teenage being that dramatic. I remember just trying to go with the flow, socialize, fit in and be cool. The stakes were really low.”

The title came from a Led Zeppelin song of the same name. The film had a great soundtrack. It was filmed in Austin, Texas.

The previews of Linklater’s new film – “Everybody Wants Some!!” – promises to do for the ‘80s what “Dazed & Confused” did for the ‘70s.

Maybe, maybe not.

We’ll wait to see if Will Brittain, Blake Jenner, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, or Tyler Hoechlin go on to become famous actors.

The plot: Set in the fall of 1980, the film follows the lives of college baseball players on the last weekend before school begins.

Hmm, sounds kinda familiar.

The title comes from the second track on Van Halen’s 1980 album “Women and Children First.” 

Rotten Tomatoes sees it as “Richard Linklater ambling through the past with a talented cast, a sweetly meandering story, and a killer classic rock soundtrack.” It was filmed in Austin, Texas.

“Everybody Wants Some!!” is currently playing at Tropic Cinema.

Maybe this one is the inverse of Albert Einstein, who once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In this case, Linklater is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for the same results.

srhoades@aol.com