Everybody Wants Some!! is director Richard Linklater’s nostalgic romp through his college jock days. He’s described Everybody Wants Some!! as a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused, and it has a similar vibe. We have college baseball players living in a house next to campus, and they drink lots of beer, get high, bust each other’s balls and chase girls. There are lots and lots of ball busting and girl chasing. All in good fun.
Everybody Wants Some!! is a dead-on 1980 time capsule, showcasing the disco, non-Urban Cowboy and punk cultural moments. And the very fun and evocative period soundtrack kicks off with My Sharona.
There is also a bong scene that has possibly the best stoned movie monologue (“language is just a construct”, Mayans, Druids, etc.) since Jack Nicholson’s “Venutians” riff around the campfire in Easy Rider.
The story’s point of view is that of the college guys, and it is not unknown for college-age guys to see women primarily as sexual opportunities. That’s pretty much the role of all the women in this movie, except for that Special Girl who gets our hero’s attention.
Linklater is the master of coming of age (Boyhood) and coming of age in relationships (the Midnight trilogy). Everybody Wants Some!! may be the least insightful of his coming of age films, but sometimes Linklater just has fun (School of Rock, Bernie), and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Everybody Wants Some!! has an appealing cast of actors that I hadn’t remembered seeing before (including the one guy who played Ryder in Glee). Dazed and Confused is known for launching the careers of hitherto unknowns Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Adam Goldberg, Joey Lauren Adams and Jason London. How about Everybody Wants Some!!? I don’t see stardom here for anyone (but keep in mind that Ben Affleck didn’t have a very showy or portentous part in Dazed and Confused).
Everybody Wants Some!! may not be Major Linklater, but it’s an amusing frolic – but probably more fun for a heterosexual male audience.