Review: Baumbach finds insight and laughs in aging, Stiller and Watts star
New Comedy ‘While We’re Young’ Follows Brooklyn Couple
It’s safe to say there aren’t a lot of movies out there about reaching middle age gracefully and happily.
And how could there be? The only thing worse than getting old, as the saying goes, is the alternative. But at least we have the movies — the good ones, anyway — to make us laugh about this fraught, undignified experience. And few recent films have done it better than Noah Baumbach’s deliciously sharp and touching “While We’re Young.”
It seems apt indeed that Baumbach’s star here, Ben Stiller, is 49 in real life — the age at which one finally, truly cannot deny having, SOMEHOW, reached middle age. In a minor but hilarious exchange, Stiller’s 40-something character, Josh Srebnick, is told he has arthritis. Surely, Josh protests with utter guilelessness, it’s not “arthritis arthritis” — it’s some other kind. “It’s arthritis, and usually I only say it once,” the doctor replies.