Review: Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!!

The film may seem like a weird gambit – something like the movie equivalent of Fox’s disastrously short-lived That ’80s Show. Yet moving into a period of dopier fashion and lamer music, and shifting the focus to strapping, young athletes (Jake is so unapologetically handsome that he might as well be a Disney prince), almost feels like a challenge for Linklater. Across his filmography he’s extended abounding sympathy for the misfits, outcasts, stoners, junkies and loveless losers. Everybody Wants Some!! turns this preoccupation inside out. It’s a film very much about the beautiful winners.

Special to The Globe and Mail