EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! Review

"There's a party down on the corner, do you want to go? They got rhythm, a little blues, and a whole lot of soul. I don't care what you've got to say,  you're comin' with me anyway. We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time." So go the words of Huey Lewis and the News' 2001 song "We're Not Here for a Long Time (We're Here for a Good Time)" and while Richard Linklater's latest film takes its name from the more appropriate Van Halen track from 1980 the writer/director is echoing the same sentiments as Lewis and his News were in their song. One of the many characters in Linklater's entertaining ensemble even throws out the familiar saying at a moment when we're discovering the drastic steps he's taken to recapture his more idyllic past. An idyllic past is mostly what Everybody Wants Some!! is really about, though. The ability to escape and live in an existence, at least for a period of time, that feels like the perfect mix of being care-free and celebrating that freedom by partying as consistently as possible. This window of unattached existence is what Linklater seems to have deduced brings out the most natural form of who we are meant to be as human beings. In experiencing this type of freedom by simply existing we are allowed to pine for that period of time the rest of our lives as most will go on to conform with the societal structures expected of them. Thus, our idyllic past is created with the key being it must remain that idyllic high point without any attempt to recreate such memories because we all know real, genuine fun can't be commonplace. It can't happen every night and the same thrills remain intact. If humans were to live forever as the characters in Everybody Wants Some!! do over the course of this three-day weekend we'd likely live half as long and grow tired of the emptiness drinking and promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners would eventually bring. And so, what Linklater is slyly conveying is that of a cherished time in his own life; memories that inform the man he is today with the added acknowledgment that it can't last forever, but it's beyond critical to drink in when that time arrives.