Richard Linklater’s sneaky follow-up to Dazed & Confused is called Everybody Wants Some, and in the first fifteen minutes of the film everybody does indeed get some.. apart from the one friend in the group who still has their V card (there’s always one in college). Dazed is a beloved cult classic; it’s loud, proud, star studded, raunchy, insightful and heartfelt and while this spiritual sequel is less star studded and decidedly more low key in some ways, it’s no less hysterically funny, insightful and eccentric as it’s sister film. If Dazed was an anthropological microcosm of high school in the 70’s, this does the same for college in the same way, particularly focusing on a group of dudes who share a house and all play on the campus baseball team, played by varied talent including Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Glen Powell, Zoe Deutsch and others. I would list them off as archetypes like the nerd, the dumb one, the brain etc but Linklater has this funny of way of shirking the stereotypes with his writing and direction so that each character somehow fits a mold yet is their own human being free from clique assumptions, which is how everyone should approach writing characters, really. The film is loose, blessedly formless and adopts the same free flowing, stream of consciousness storytelling as Dazed because this is after not born of a script or new idea, but simply hazy recollections from the past, Linklater’s and others in his creative team who very clearly had high school and college experiences exactly like this and wished to impart not necessarily specific instances or exact anecdotes from these times but rather an overall essence. They have succeeded greatly and I wish more filmmakers went for the very Altman-esque, vignette based, purposefully inchoate approach. This is a bawdy, hilarious, sweet, hectic, touching and surprisingly romantic ensemble piece and is every bit the worthy companion to Dazed.
-Nate Hill
Podcasting Them Softly 