Like Jason Reitman, Noah Baumbach has mastered the near-impossible knack of writing smart, memorable, quotable dialogue that doesn’t sound like a stand-up routine in search of a rim-shot.
I suppose George Hickenlooper would mock a movie like this as a “puerile masturbatory self examination of stone dead emotional detachment and characters who no longer mirror real life.” But I’d rather enjoy a casual wank with characters like this than dry hump an inflatable fetish MILF from a back issue of Reader’s Digest about “The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met.”
Because guess what, George, I don’t meet a lot of Norman Rockwell types in my own personal “real life.” My real life actually is “littered with characters being quirky and snarky to titillate postmodern sensibilities.” Those are the quirky titillaters I know and hang with. So get over yourself and your Horatio Alger nostalgia for a “golden age when movies were about telling stories.” Those stories are not my stories. Keep your sticky masturbatory hands off my high art. I got yer “polarity of tastes” right here.