After watching Noah Baumbach's first film, Kicking and Screaming, I never thought I'd never see him again, but he's stuck at it and is not one of the leading independent filmmakers in American cinema. For the most part this is a fresh, wryly entertaining look at the generation gap between X and Y as Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts befriend Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried.
A lot of this feels so honest and true - the documentary filmmaker unable to resist flattery, the enthusiasm that comes from associating with the younger generation, the pressure caused by fertility issues. It falls down in a couple of places - the film doesnt do anything with Seyfriend's character, she's just sort of "there"; and it gets too plotty at the end when it falls into All About Eve/ Broadcast News territory.
The acting is good and I liked the look of New York - it's a side to the city we don't often see, which had novelty to me, even though to New Yorkers in the film industry it probably seemed agonisingly naval gazing.
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