Critics,are you kidding us

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Feeling unprepared for the 'real world', four recent college graduates spend their time philosophising and avoiding taking action in this feature film debut from Noah Baumbach. The film features witty, memorable dialogue left, right and centre as one friend reckons "I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur", while another comments "I feel like I'm being poisoned" if a bartender at a bar does not drink with him, and the list goes on. There is also some quite pointed in how unprepared the foursome are for the real world despite their extensive education, unleashed into the world like a baby not wanting to be born, as the title suggests. None of the characters are, however, particularly likable for all of their witticisms and at times thought-provoking conversations. The foursome actually come across as more lazy than scared or ill-prepared for post-college life, and none of them have especially vibrant personalities either. The brightest moments in the film are, in fact, had by Elliott Gould as the far too open father of the foursome, sharing his experiences with using condoms at his age and finding love post-marriage separation, much to the disgust of his son. The film does tap into something interesting though as the foursome come to realise that they feel "pressure ... to remain friends" post-graduation. This more than anything else captures how microcosmic college life is often considered to be and how different the actual world is. It's a different, inevitable phase of life involving a big transition indeed comparable to birth.

Noah Baumbach does a similar thing with Kicking and Screaming that Amy Heckerling did with her film Clueless of the same year, and that provide the people from high school/college that we loathed seeing every day with some semblance of identification and humanity to make them into people. The people in Kicking and Screaming may indeed be satirized and heavily romanticized versions of people you'd encounter on a liberal arts campus on any given day - and for me, currently attending a liberal arts school, this one hit a bit too close to home - but their commonalities with their real life counterparts that you can't deny the satirical dial isn't turned up all the way past human recognition.The people in Kicking and Screaming are the type of people to put a sign on a pile of broken glass in their apartment identifying it as such rather than sweeping it up. They are the type of people who fear that their whole schedule will be thrown off irreparably when they move to Milwaukee, which poses a one hour time difference from their current location. They are the type of people to play impromptu games involving how many films involving monkeys they can name on the dime, as well as being the person to name all the Friday the 13th films the fastest with no assistance. Finally, they are the kind of people who think they're the only people going through the kind of quarter-life/millennial identity crisis they are currently experiencing, and as such, feel better holding long conversations about living at home, getting drunk, masturbating, and repeating said events day-in and day-out until an opportunity's knocks are deafening or ambition hits them like a good buzz.We focus on four college pals: Grover (Josh Hamilton), who breaks up with his girlfriend in the opening scene of the film when she reveals that she'll be bound for Prague in a few days, Max (Chris Eigeman), who often insights the ridiculous, aforementioned games, Otis (Carlos Jacott), who proclaims to only have two emotions, antsy and testy, and Skippy (Jason Wiles), who finds himself in that awkward stage with Miami (Parker Posey) between hooking up and going steady. After graduating, instead of moving on to bigger and better things, as many college graduates do, the four comrades remain on campus, happily indulging in the same food they condemned having to eat for the past four years and slumming around campus through endless nights of drinking and conversing about everything and nothing.The rapid-fire wit in Kicking and Screaming is probably the film's most laudable feature. Noah Baumbach has predicated a film, not so much on realistic conversation being that characters can often expunge a paragraph worth of ideas and ramblings without even breaking a sweat or stammering over their words, but on humorous and eminently quotable film that releases the confusing and often unorthodox mind of a young adult. Misery loves company and the reason Kicking and Screaming seems to resonate is its ability to speak the language most millennials understand and speak themselves - it's the language of anti-jokes and endless quirkiness in a manner that, initially seems condescending to outsiders, but is part of the broader comedy/joke culture instilled in the youth of today.While we can reflect on the time when many of us didn't know where or what the hell we'd be, despite everyone, from friends to family, asking us that same question and our parents asking us when all that hard-earned money they spent was going to pay off, Kicking and Screaming plays it largely for laughs and the situational absurdity it deservedly earns. Despite this momentary bout of disillusionment and listlessness on part of a few wealthy, privileged white kids - who have spent their entire lives learning how to take and pass tests and quizzes and filling in bubbles on a Scantron - who are realizing their real world skills are crippled by a lack of know-how and ambition. As a result, when every option you can conjure seems either frighteningly far out of your comfort zone, irrational, or downright implausible, what else is there to do besides sit, drink, and contemplate.Kicking and Screaming is a film that pretty much showcases everything wrong, right, obtuse, and special about millennials in a way that uses all the devices they respond to - patronizing humor, sarcasm, and long conversations about absolutely nothing. While it can satirize them, it is not derogatory or mean-spirited towards them. The concluding monologue by Grover in front of an airport customs official has our main character stating how he wanted to do something daring with his life when he was young, while he still could and not be bound to family, finances, and immediate commitments. Those same words were probably coming out of the mouth of Noah Baumbach, who was twenty-five at the time of directing and co-writing (with Oliver Berkman) Kicking and Screaming. The encompassing moral is to leave them with doubt and keep surprising them - or, at the very least, keep talking.Starring: John Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, Carlos Jacott, Jason Wiles, and Parker Posey. Directed by: Noah Baumbach.

A group of college friends graduate. Jane (Olivia d'Abo) tells her boyfriend Grover (Josh Hamilton) that she moving to Prague to study rather than joining him in Brooklyn. Chet (Eric Stoltz) has been in school for 10 years. Three months later, Otis (Carlos Jacott)'s worst fear comes true and he moving to Milwaukee. Grover is staying with Max (Chris Eigeman) who is just as aimless but then Otis returns having changed his mind. Clueless Skippy (Jason Wiles) is moving in with Miami (Parker Posey).These people are a little too aimless to be completely compelling. There are some fun dialog. The friendships are interesting. They just need something bigger to deal with. Even artificially, it needs something central to hold these characters together. I keep wondering why these guys don't go off on their own. They need to deal with something or anything. For so many character being so aimless but being aimless together, it would make more sense that this is one night or a few days instead of months and months. Let them be aimless after the graduation party but they have to leave sometimes. Apparently not.

This movie is not great. It is an accurate portrayal, nothing more. All the characters are the clichéd prototypes of college life, all those who are interesting for the first part of school but get gradually more and more annoying as semesters plug on. And eventually, you no longer really want to spend time with them, because they are going no where and doing nothing, and haven't their entire "career" as students. Its just a bunch of high schoolers without boundaries or parents, and it isn't art, or even interesting once the initial humor and novelty wears off and the realization comes: this movie is the people I hate. Because they are pretentious posers unwilling to put forth the dedication necessary to become masters of any craft, much like the director at the time when he made this. Hopefully he will at some point, The Squid and the Whale is at least moving in the right direction.