While We’re Young

The range of potentially universal issues being tackled in While We’re Young run the gamut – from broader explorations of aging and relationships to something as specific as how editing can manipulate the way the truth is perceived in documentaries.

So there’s a lot on the mind of director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) in this satirical look at middle-aged angst, but the film’s lack of depth make its overall impact more muddled than profound.

Baumbach tips his hand by opening with a passage from Ibsen’s play “The Master Builder,” about the skepticism with which one generation tends to view another. Indeed, that sets the tone for the story of Josh (Ben Stiller), a fledgling filmmaker whose marriage to Cornelia (Naomi Watts) is stable but who starts experiencing a mid-life crisis when the couple’s best friends have a baby.

Josh’s feelings of resentment are fueled by his own insecurities, something that appears to change when he meets Jamie (Adam Driver), an aspiring documentarian who claims to be a fan. Young and hip, Jamie and his free-spirited wife (Amanda Seyfried) play records and watch VHS tapes while Josh and Cornelia cling to social media and try to remain plugged in. So as the older couple begins to embrace the throwback lifestyle of their new friends, things take a darker turn once ulterior motives are revealed.

The actors from each generation respond to the challenge, with Charles Grodin tossing around sardonic quips as Cornelia’s legendary filmmaker father, and musician Peter Yarrow garnering laughs as a dry documentary interview subject.

While We’re Young offers a simple premise that grows more complex through the character-driven approach of Baumbach’s quirky screenplay, which is moderately amusing while channeling Woody Allen in more than just the Manhattan setting.

Yet does a series of generalizations and exaggerations really constitute meaningful insight? You could argue that the film should be appreciate for its scattered big laughs and little more, but the filmmaker clearly hints at deeper meanings, for example examining how ego influences the relationship between commerce and artistic integrity.

Is Baumbach trying to take sides between Gen-Xers and millennials? Or is he just poking equal fun at both? Do we miss the good old days, or is the best yet to come? Such intriguing questions become lost amid a series of final-act contrivances.

Rated R, 97 minutes.