Palm Springs: A cheeky nightmare

Palm Springs (2020) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for sexual content, brief violence, drug use and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.31.20

Some films shouldn’t be discussed ahead of time, because so much of the joy comes from being caught off-guard by the unexpected twists, turns and sidebar surprises orchestrated by an audaciously clever writer and director.

With nothing to do until the wedding ceremony begins in a few hours, Sarah (Cristin Milioti)
and Nyles (Andy Samberg) enjoy some quality time ... in a pool belonging to folks who
are out of town.

That’s definitely the case with this snarky rom-com, available via Hulu. Director Max Barbakow and writer Andy Siara play us like a fiddle. Considering this is the feature debut for both, that result is even more impressive.

So I’m inclined to simply say, Check it out; you’ll have a lot of fun — allowing for a tad too many F-bombs — and leave it at that. Because I can’t really say anything else, without giving too much away.

Still with me?

Okay then: On your head be it.

Barbakow and Siara open on a goat. Somewhere in the desert. 

It’ll be an important goat.

Elsewhere, Nyles (Andy Samberg) wakens to the petulant whine of Misty (Meredith Hagner), his self-centered Girlfriend From Hell. They’re in Palm Springs for the destination wedding of friends Tala and Abe (Camila Mendes and Tyler Hoechlin), taking place later this day at a fancy desert resort.

Nyles seems to subsist on beer and burritos; he has the scruffy, apathetic attitude of a failure-to-launch. Even so, his casual indifference — as the day proceeds — seems unnecessarily boorish. Couple this behavior with considerable vulgarity and profanity, and it feels like we’ve wandered into an aggressively crude Seth Rogen comedy.

Not so; just be patient.

Evening falls; the ceremony concludes; the microphone is passed around. Misty’s toast is absolutely ghastly and tone-deaf. The bride’s parents — Howard and Pia (Peter Gallagher and Jacquiline Obradors) — pass the baton to Tala’s older sister Sarah (Cristin Milioti), maid of honor and, one would expect, next to speak. But Sarah, tongue-tied and terrified — having consumed perhaps a few too many glasses of wine — stands silently, like a deer in headlights.

Enter Nyles, who snatches the microphone and saves the moment with a truly terrific speech. (Who’d have thought?)

Everybody Wants Some: College daze

Everybody Wants Some (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity, drug use, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

Boys will be boys ... and it’s a wonder girls will have anything to do with them.

Texas-born writer/director Richard Linklater hearkens back to his cinematic roots with this new laid-back comedy, which he regards as a “spiritual sequel” to his career-making 1993 hit, Dazed and Confused. That film, set in May 1976, followed the antics of small-town high school kids during their final day of class; this one spends three days in September 1980, during the long weekend preceding the first day of college.

Having commandeered a table at the local disco, Jake (Blake Jenner, center) and his new
friends — from left, Finn (Glen Powell), Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), Dale (J. Quinton
Johnson) and Plummer (Temple Baker) — assess the field to determine which young
ladies are worth pursuing.

The goals — getting drunk, stoned and indulging in recreational sex — haven’t changed, nor has the execution: Although Linklater typically begins with carefully dialogued scripts, he encourages his cast members to expand and improvise, as they become more “in tune” with their characters. The result feels spontaneous and organic, like a well-rehearsed play that has grown from humbler origins.

That said, such riffing isn’t always successful. Many of the guys here feel goofily authentic, their conversation and antics what we’d expect from early ’80s college jocks. A few, however, are way over the top, the young actors in question trying much too hard. By the same token, some of the unstructured interactions sorta drift off into space, never really justifying their existence.

At just a few minutes shy of two full hours, Everybody Wants Some also starts to feel a bit tedious, its episodic nature gradually wearing out its welcome. Better that Linklater and editor Sandra Adair had trimmed more judiciously, and left us wanting more.

Even so, it’s hard to resist the film’s larkish charm, and that of its young cast. At its best moments — which is most of the time — Linklater’s unabashedly autobiographical ode to his own college experience is both fun and funny.

The setting is Southeast Texas State University, where incoming freshman Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner) has left his small-town roots to become one of the newest members of STU’s baseball team. That allows him the best of all possible perks: a room in one of the school’s two frat-like “baseball houses,” far removed from the cramped, apartment-like dorms in which most new students are shoveled.

Jake quickly finds himself one of the low men in a pecking order dominated by seniors McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin) and Roper (Ryan Guzman), who view it as their responsibility to squash the prima donna instincts of newbies who may have been star athletes in high school, but now are no more than scramblers amid peers who all were stars at their respective schools.