I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when I sat down to watch Everbody Wants Some but what I got was a fun, unattached and effortless movie from writer/director Richard Linklater.

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It’s a movie that has been called the spiritual sequel to Dazed And Confused and I guess I can see why, although for me they don’t have that many similarities. Sure they have the whole “finding your place in an unfamiliar time of your school life” thing in common, but with Everybody Wants Some there seems to be less purpose and a bit more fun. At no point in the 112 minutes of watching this movie could I ever really get invested in any of the characters too much, but the scenes flew by and I was glued just wanting to know what was going to happen next or when will the “big thing” go down. It never really did but that’s OK, which was the beauty of this movie, it’s just fun to watch.

The story takes place in 1980 and is mostly centered around Jake (Blake Jenner), a freshman that was accepted to college on a baseball scholarship. With that comes a room in a worn down house that Jake gets to share with some of his new team mates on campus, which is where we meet him as he tries to find his place in the house and with his new team mates. It’s a crowded house, full of testosterone and stupidity and Jake needs to settle in fast with the others, especially his roommate Billy (Will Brittain), who can’t get off the phone with his girlfriend, and the rest of the group, Finnegan (Glen Powell), Roper (Ryan Guzman), Dale (Quinton Johnson), and Plummer (Temple Baker).

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Jake is stepping up from being the hot shot at his high school to now being the newbie among a team of equals, and this quickly serves as stark reality check to the freshman about how things are going to be from now on. We are also kicked off with a count down to 3 days and 15 minutes before class begins, which is basically how the movie plays out. Over those 3 days we get to see basically what happens when you leave a group of teens unsupervised in their college days. There are plenty of characters to enjoy and they all stand out in their own way. You have the alpha dog of the team that loses his mind when he loses at anything, the super philosophical stoner dude, the wise and fearless ladies man, the guy that loses every single stupid bet that he makes and each of them have their moments. There’s nothing that will leave any long lasting impressions, but in the moment, these are people you would want to hang out with.

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There is also get a bit of a romantic entanglement between Jake and freshman drama student Beverly (Zoey Deutch). There really isn’t that much focus placed on their romance, just enough to give it sufficient substance to matter to the story.

For me Everybody Wants Some never really settles on any specific theme or message, it’s not a college comedy or sports movie. It is a bunch of fun, and the characters are funny, it is filmed well and the pacing is fast. The dialogue is clever and well acted. As an added bonus the soundtrack is awesome. You should watch this movie if you are a fan of Linklater’s films or just want to have fun watching a movie.

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Everybody Wants Some is available now on DVD.

Last Updated: November 9, 2016

Everybody Wants Some
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