It’s nice to see the Dazed and Confused icons grew up with a little talent, no? Yes, Richard Linklater’s high school dopers of the 70s are now stud All American collegiate baseball players of the 80s. I suppose it’s not exactly the same group of folks, but … it kinda feels like it. In fact, amiable as Everybody Wants Some!! is, it feels a lot like a retread. Huh, why is that? Is it the humorous homoerotic teen vibe reflected in Linklater’s high school film? Is it halving a pitched baseball with a weapon, like in Kill Bill, Vol. I? Is it the revival of T.E.G.W.A.R. from Bang the Drum Slowly? Or maybe just the fact that Richard Linklater is doing another baseball film.
It’s late August, 1980. The school year starts on Monday and freshman pitcher Jake (Blake Jenner) arrives on campus all squeaky clean and new and set to bond with his new best friends — an entire team of talented amateur baseball players with porn moustaches. These fellas are apparently THE BIG DEAL at Southwestern Texas U. *Cough* *Cough* BULLSHIT *Cough* Sorry about that; something caught in my throat. Now what was that, again? You’re not actually claiming a Texas school favors its baseball team over its football team, are you? This is Texas. Your baseball team could go undefeated for an entire decade and the headlines would still favor the exploits of the 3-8 football team. Not that the two are incompatible – baseball season never competes with football season; it’s one of the drawbacks to the sport. While the football season exactly mirrors the fall semester in most schools, baseball season is in the spring and often extends beyond finals, which is fairly inconvenient for any potential fan base.
The tone is set early when Jake enters his house for the first time and is ordered, immediately, to shut off a hose filling a 2nd floor water bed … a water bed that makes the floor creek. This never comes up again; it’s simply a way to introduce Jake to his teammates, show the pecking order, and describe priorities. For a nothing moment, there’s a lot here. This is the way Everybody Wants Some!! goes. Most of it is simply timeline moments, no hint of plot. There are a lot of moments in a weekend; the fellas take in four different parties, chase tail, engage in a bar fight, track skirts, battle over everything, ferret for beaver and, oh yeah, play baseball. There’s no cohesive story thread here; it’s all about how young men bond for a weekend. I won’t say Everybody Wants Some!! is plotless so much as aimless. I feel like Linklater is reexploring his early filmmaking roots with films like Slacker.
As this film is entirely about character development, it is better 
made for television. There we can learn much more about alpha McReynolds (Tyler Horchlin), guru Finnegan (Glen Powell), team psychotic Jay (Juston Street), token Dale (J. Quinton Johnson) and Jake’s new girlfriend Beverly (Zoey Deutch). It’s important to throw in that last one; just like Top Gun, there were indeed women in this film with speaking roles. Hard to believe, I know.
A far cry from Airplane!, Everybody Wants Some!! still has earned a place in the all time list of top comedies ending in an exclamation point. EWS has two for good measure. It was of great urgency that the audience knew that everybody, indeed, wanted some. My guess is the producers were thisclose to having a title with an emoji … but it just wasn’t chronologically relevant. Relevant or not, your Animal House lovin’ friends will probably enjoy this one.
♪I had a friend who’s a big baseball player
An All American tool
When he brought that heat upside
Was like Dana meets Zuul
Saw him and his mates the other day
Hazing all the noobs
Had to rush the job because
Their targets had no boobs
Horny Days
When you’re ridin’ high
Horny days
And the wink of any girls’ eye
Horny Daze
Hoary Ways♫
Rated R, 117 Minutes
D: Richard Linklater
W: Richard Linklater
Genre: How a baseball team wastes a weekend
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: 1980s college studs
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Title IX
♪ Parody inspired by “Glory Days”
