Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
No, this is not the Will Ferrell movie about soccer. That is Kicking & Screaming (2005). Kicking And Screaming (1995) is very different. But wait, sometimes this Kicking And Screaming is sometimes referred to as Kicking & Screaming? It’s all very confusing.
“A bunch of guys hang around their college for months after graduation, continuing a life much like the one before graduation.”
Director: Noah Baumbach
Writers: Noah Baumbach, Bo Berkman
Starring: Josh Hamilton, Eric Stolz, Catherine Kellner, Olivia d’Abo, Carlos Jacott, Chris Eigeman
Release Date: October 6, 1995
IMDB
No, this is not the Will Ferrell movie about soccer. That is Kicking & Screaming (2005). Kicking And Screaming (1995) is very different. But wait, sometimes this Kicking And Screaming is sometimes referred to as Kicking & Screaming? It’s all very confusing.
Noah Baumbach’s directorial and writing debut is a movie about dudes hanging out and being afraid to grow up. It is about a post graduation stasis that is relatable to anyone who has finished one major stage of life and has no idea where to go next. Some individuals move on quickly but come crawling back to normalcy. Some people never leave and plant roots at a place they know best.
Kicking & Screaming is a talkie movie that moves a mile-a-minute and shuffles different characters onto the screen at the same pace of a card deck being shuffled. The main cohort of the story are a group of college friends, all of whom know each other’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. Everyone is honest to a fault and secrets can’t be kept because there is an unspoken aura that each can recognize. Kicking & Screaming uses the huddle of male friendship, and one specific love story, to show how growing up is never as easy as one believes it is outlined.
The movie begins at a graduation party where Grover (Josh Hamilton) learns that his girlfriend Jane (Olivia d’Abo) is going to move to Prague. In the first of a many quick tick-for-tat arguments skewed throughout the movie, Grover and Jane breakup with differing views on what to do and where to live now that they are in the real world.
Grover is scared to move on while Jane is ready to take a big step. Grover moves back onto familiar college ground with his friends, living in the gulp of romantic depression and self-applied carbonite. The character of Grover in this post college haze is countered by flashback scenes showing a younger Grover meeting and falling in love with Jane at the start of his senior year. Using graduation as the meat on this life landmark sandwich, Kicking & Screaming shows the sunny hopefulness while you are on top of the mountain and the cloudy unsure disposition when the parachute on growing up fails to launch.
Admittedly, it took myself a little while to catch onto the flashback sequences and the symbolic connective tissue that Baumbach was trying to illustrate, but once all the dots became connected it was easy for me to see the full focus. I will tell myself that, much like growing up, it takes a little time for things to come full circle.
If you are a fan of movies that are like an English class, then Kick And Screaming fits your syllabus perfectly. It is in the same vein, though different, as High Fidelity (2000) with John Cusack. Both are screenplays that feature men having to come to grips with themselves over decisions they have made. Both movies revisit the past and question how to progress into the future. In Kicking And Screaming, the quirky characters are speaking directly at the camera, but they are speaking to the same hidden subconscious that experiences FOMO and body shaking hindsight.
It’s a quick one here, but I pose an existential question that may or may not be beyond silly.
Is it smart or advantageous to have life-long friends? Would life be easier if your closest acquaintances from younger years faded away, leaving no tether to an easier life with happier memories? It is a stupid question, I know. Friends are good. Friends are rewarding. Friends remind you where you have come from.
But I’d be curious how often friends have kept people in a place or mindset when they ought to have moved onto a different place or stage of life? Kicking And Screaming is about young men dragging their feet about being forced to move onto the next stage of life. Baumbach’s script is crisp. It’s even more impressive when you consider he was just 25 years old when he wrote the movie.
As of Mid-January, Kicking And Screaming is streaming on Netflix.
STANKO RATING: B+
Stanko Excel Lists | Movies, Books, Podcasts. TV Shows
Stanko Letterdbox Account
There is a lot happening in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. One could argue that there is too much going on.
Much maligned as the worst of the Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible II doesn’t do itself any favors upon rewatch.
MaXXXine (2024) “In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.” Director: Ti WestWriter: Ti WestCast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Halsey, Lily Collins, Kevin Bacon, Bob Cannavale, Michelle…
Stanko's Stance 