Review: While We're Young (2014)

This is the part where I tell a fun little anecdote of what lead me to watch this movie, and more times than I care to admit, attempt to mask that the only reason I actually watched this movie was because of a particular actor or actress. I’m not even going to try that this time round. I watched this for Adam Driver. There. I feel so much better now. What I did learn though is that my husband has such a strong hatred for Ben Stiller that he refused to even be in the house when I watched this. That was new to me!

While We’re Young (2014) introduces us to Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts), a married couple in their 40’s with a deteriorating relationship. They aren’t able to have children and are drifting apart from their best friends who are new parents, and Josh is also struggling professionally with his latest documentary, which he has been working on for 8 years now. Whilst out for lunch one day, they bump into younger couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Jamie is a huge fan of Josh’s work, and the four become good friends.

It all starts so well. There’s such chemistry between the couples, everything seems so effortless. Problems that are all too real are portrayed, like close friends growing older and taking separate life paths. Then there’s the humour, often  and subtle as we watch Josh and Cornelia get involved with the fun a carefree lifestyle that Jamie and Darby live. It’s around the midway point that I felt although this movie seemed predictable, it was still an extremely enjoyable watch.

Oh, that soon changed. The two couples go away on a spiritual cleansing break, which was weird enough, but then that ended in a far too long scene of everyone throwing up everywhere, which was just grim, not funny in the slightest. I’m pretty sure there was some kissing straight after too which is making me feel a bit ill just thinking about it. That’s where everything just takes a turn for the worst.

I don’t know what happened to the movie after that. The tone takes such a sharp turn it actually felt like I was watching another movie entirely. It becomes more and more about Josh’s documentary work, and it gets very dark, almost entering thriller territory. That’s all I can really say, because my attention soon started to wander.

It’s a shame, because this could have been a great movie. I can’t fault any of the actors involved, I thought they all did a great job, but something went wrong somewhere along the line.