While We're Young (2014)

A middle-aged couple's career and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple enters their lives.

Director:

Noah Baumbach

Writers:

Noah Baumbach, Henrik Ibsen (epigraph from "A Master Builder" by)

Stars:

Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver

1 win & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Naomi Watts	...	Cornelia
Ben Stiller	...	Josh
Maria Dizzia	...	Marina
Adam Horovitz	...	Fletcher
Matthew Maher	...	Tim (as Matt Maher)
Peter Yarrow	...	Ira Mandelstam
Bonnie Kaufman	...	Ira's Wife
Hector Otero	...	Frank
Deborah Eisenberg	...	New School Woman
Adam Driver	...	Jamie
Amanda Seyfried	...	Darby
Dree Hemingway	...	Tipper
Matthew Shear	...	Benny
Annie Baker	...	Elise
Quincy Tyler Bernstine	...	Pepper

Storyline

Josh Srebnick is 44. He is married to Cornelia, 43, the daughter of Leslie Breitbart, a respected documentary filmmaker. The couple lives comfortably in New York Village and gives the image of happiness. But things are not so rosy as they look: on a personal level, their relationships have been cooling down while they suffer from not having children. On a professional plane, things have deteriorated as well. Josh, who is also a documentary filmmaker like his father-in-law, has lost inspiration: he has been grappling with his last movie for eight years now without being able to complete it. To be true, Josh goes nowhere and his marriage is on the rocks. Things start changing when Josh and Cornelia meet another married pair: Jamie and Darby, a generation younger, express their admiration for Josh (Jamie wishing to become a documentary filmmaker himself). Plus, they are much cooler, smarter and more uninhibited than the two forty-odds. Could they help Josh and Cornelia to revive their ...

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Plot Keywords:

documentary filmmaker | documentary filmmaking | father in law | baby | hipster | 

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Taglines:

Life never gets old

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Mystery

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Certificate:

14A

Did You Know?

Trivia

Noah Baumbach used the exchange of dialogue from Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder in the opening scene because, according to him, it kind of says everything about the film.

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Quotes

Josh: Let's have kids.
Cornelia: I don't want this to be 'Every time you take a hallucinogen you want to have a baby'.
Josh: Not every time.

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Connections

References Nanook of the North (1922)

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Soundtracks

Faintly Blowing
Written by Peter Daltrey and Eddie Pumer
Performed by Kaleidoscope
Courtesy of Virgin Records Ltd.
Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User Reviews

A funny but uneven work about a character than can be irritating

It feels as if we're back in "Greenburg" territory with "While We're Young" made four years later, since we have the same writer and director (Noah Baumbach) and the same lead actor (Ben Stiller) playing a similar central character. This time, Stiller is Josh, married to Cornelia (Naomi Watts), a middle-aged married couple who find themselves hooking up with Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a couple in their twenties, who remind the older pair of the freshness and spontaneity of youth while he struggles professionally and she laments their inability to become parents.

The female roles are underwritten and, while Driver is good, this is really Stiller's film. The trouble is that he is such an irritating character, unable to complete a long-running project to produce a boring documentary and foolishly trying to recapture his lost youth. There are some funny scenes and situations, but this is an uneven work with a sequence at a hippy retreat proving particularly silly.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [Japan]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 April 2015 (USA)

Also Known As:

While We're Young

Filming Locations:

Jackson Hole Restaurant, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$10,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$227,688, 29 March 2015

Gross USA:

$7,587,485

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$21,075,757

Company Credits

Production Co:

IAC Films, Scott Rudin Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

97 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1