Noah Baumbach can be pretty hit and miss with me. I love the screenplays he wrote with Wes Anderson for The Life Aquatic and Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as his own previous films The Squid and the Whale and 2012’s Frances Ha, the last film he made before this one.

This meant I had high hopes for it that it didn’t quite live up to. Not that it’s a terrible film. It just doesn’t really take a strong enough stance in any direction. Much like his other films, Greenberg and Kicking and Screaming; his over-affluent and self-important characters aren’t entirely hateable but you don’t really feel much sympathy for them either. It’s a comedy/drama hybrid but never hilarious or gripping. It kinda just meanders…

One thing that I was thinking of as I watched it was how close to home the story might feel to Ben Stiller, who had his first taste of success in his mid-twenties. I imagine that he might relate closer to Adam Driver’s “Jamie” character as the ambitious young filmmaker hustling to be heard; more so than the character he plays, a washed up middle aged documentarian with a fear of completing a film he’s been working on for 8 solid years.

Adam Driver does a good job with the role he’s been given but it’s very similar to most of the roles that he plays, and especially the one he’s the most know for in TV’s Girls. Amanda Seyfried is mostly wasted on such a small role, although she too plays it well. Naomi Watts can generally get a lot out of a little, but had a little too little to work with this time around.

There are memorable performances to be found in the smaller characters in the film. Like Jamie and Darby’s whacked out room-mate Tipper, Ad-Roc from the Beastie Boys playing a tired and frustrated middle aged father and Charles Grodin as Naomi Watts character’s dad, who is probably the most relatable of the bunch. Grodin also plays the misanthropic doctor who provides Louis CK with the facts of life with a surly demeanour in the FX series Louie. I realised that watching the newest episode the other day. I really like him as an actor. He should get more recognition.

Sam Levy, the film’s cinematographer, had previously worked with Kelly Reichardt on Wendy and Lucy, notable for its long, moving camera takes, as is Frances Ha, the last film he made with Baumbach, where they created an idyllic New York in nostalgic black and white. This time around it’s a technicolour Big Apple with less creative flourish and more of an overall sense of cool. In that way it’s comparable to Manhattan and Annie Hall, although it’s a stretch to say that about the rest of the film.

If you are a particularly big fan of Baumbach or Ben Stiller then you might get something out of watching this at the cinema but otherwise I’d wait until it’s available to watch at home.    

- Nathan Kearney