Golden Years

Rick's snowblower in Spring
Rick’s snowblower in Spring

“I remember when that song was just bad.” Ben Stiller’s character in “While We’re Young” couldn’t resist telling Adam Driver’s character this when he heard Toto’s “Eye of the Tiger.” And the funny thing is it does sound good now. Noah Boaumbach’s movie is a real mashup of generations and hipness, dying art forms and new technology, a real clash of those with their best years receding and those with them ahead. It has been awhile since we came out of a movie we immediately wanted to see again. You want to be able to recall more lines so you can toss them off in similar situations the way Dave Mahoney, who died nine years years tomorrow, used to do.

This is Boaumbach’s best movie yet, better than the “Squid and The Whale,” way better than “Francis Ha” and giant leap from “Greenberger,” the real precursor to this one. Ben Stiller is fearless. Not afraid to do anything on screen. If it isn’t him speaking, his facial reactions, his expressions, his body language, the way he walks, rides a bike or dances, he is so on he steals every scene.

Louise‘s brother, a frequent Boaumbach extra, is in the movie, this time playing a goofy shaman who oversees a ceremony where mushrooms are ingested, the participants puke and the shaman takes off with a young girl on his moped.

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